The time is now!

March 14, 2013 Leave a comment

writerIt’s here, finally! The books are in boxes by the door, passages for the reading are marked out ready, the MC has been briefed, the food is being prepared as I write this post and the book cover has been blown up to poster size. Everything is ready to go. Except me. I’m not so sure I want to do it anymore. After years of working toward this goal, I am terrified.

There is a reason I am very happy being a writer. I love the solitude. I really enjoy sitting at my computer for days at a time with only the characters in my head for company. I thrive on alone time—and on writing. And the technological revolution has made it very easy to function perfectly well via social media without the need to interact face-to-face. Mostly.

So why is a book launch necessary?

I’m told it’s an opportunity to speak directly to the market for the novel. But that more importantly, it’s an opportunity to mark the beginning of a writer’s journey to building a readership. After all, what is the point of spending years writing a book that no one reads? It’s an interesting conundrum for many writers. I’ve written before about the point at which a book becomes a book.

But when a writer just wants to write, a book launch feels like a bit of an indulgence. Why can’t we just let social media do the job it does best, and get the word out there?  Many writers have reclusive tendencies, which is why they’re able to spend long periods in solitude. They’d rather not have to do the public speaking or self-promotion that goes along with conducting a book launch.

Whilst much of writers’ lives may happen inside or online, stepping outside the comfort zone to face real people leaves a writer incredibly vulnerable. Conducting writers’ groups for teenagers is nothing compared to facing a group of potential readers at a book launch.

Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t feel right to be spruiking my own work. Even though I know that this is part of being a writer, and it is a vital part, still I’d rather not have to. But I believe in my work. And the reality is that if I don’t spread the word about it, if it doesn’t get out into the public domain, then I’m not going to be able to continue being a writer.

And the time is right now. Here I am. I am a writer and this is my work. I hope you enjoy it.

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Writing is my lifeblood

March 1, 2013 2 Comments

IMG_3581After four years, three versions, two editions, one name change, multiple rewrites and much stress, my novel Fake Profile is about to launch. I am relieved and excited and just a wee bit scared. Terrified actually! Writing this novel has taken me on a roller coaster of a journey unlike anything I have experienced in my professional life.

I’ve felt the highs and lows with equal intensity. From the exhilaration of winning an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship Award for the raw manuscript in 2010, to the crushing disappointment of having a publishing contract offer withdrawn because I unwittingly uploaded an e-version and elected to retain the Digital Management Rights for the manuscript.

I’ve felt the warmth and enthusiasm of a supportive writing community and the harsh cold reality of a publishing industry fighting for its life in a changing world. A few times I stuffed the manuscript deep inside a folder hidden on my computer, vowing to throw in the towel , only to drag it back out and rewrite the whole thing again.

And through the whole process, I learnt much about myself—the most important of which is: I am a writer. I can’t ignore the fact. It doesn’t matter how disillusioned I become, or how harsh the critics are, I can’t not write. It’s as necessary to me as breathing. It’s difficult to explain how much a part of my being is dependent upon my writing. If I don’t write for any length of time, I feel the life force begin to drain. I become weaker and sadder and this influences every other aspect of my life. My teaching suffers, my friendships suffer, my connection to myself suffers, the way I view the world is affected.

I love being a writer. I thrive on the solitude it requires. I love the writing community. They get it. When I talk about the voices in my head, they know exactly what it means. My writing colleagues can follow my chaotic thought processes from manuscript to manuscript and character to character without blinking an eye.

I had barely finished Fake Profile before starting the next novel, Say Nothing. And the first draft of Say Nothing was complete before I began the long, slow and laborious road to publication for Fake Profile (and that itself, is a post for another day). Now I’m almost finished the first draft of my third, and while that is happening the first of a trilogy is incubating.

It’s been a very long time coming. I’ve been writing since I was very young, but it’s only been the last ten years or so (I have earlier manuscripts sitting in drawers that have never seen the light of day), that I began to take my writing seriously enough to recognise it is my lifeblood. I have no choice. I have to write. It is as simple as that.

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Gutsy teen writers

December 14, 2012 2 Comments

storyThere is nothing more powerful or moving than teenagers writing about things that matter to them. Real issues. Things like bullying, self-harm, peer pressure, sex, suicide and friendship. As adults, we can postulate about what these issues mean for young people and what we think should be done about them. We can incorporate them into our narrative plots, or write manuals and guides to address them. We can even write policy and legislation and ‘best practice’ benchmarks to deal with them. And we do.

But sitting back and listening as a teenage writer reads her story about bullying and self-harm and her teenage peers critique it, has to be one of the most powerful experiences I’ve been privileged to have as convener of young adult writers’ groups.

This particular writers group consists of twelve fourteen-year-old girls, and following on from our work last term on ‘writing what you know,’ this term we’ve been working on developing critiquing skills. Each of the participants wrote a narrative, with free choice over genre and plot, and then they each read their draft to the group for critiquing.

Anyone who has ever been a participant in a writers’ group understands the emotional impact of putting your work out there to be critiqued. It’s harrowing. Writing is a very subjective thing and as writers, we embed a little of ourselves into each piece we write, whether we realise it or not. We become close to and protective of our characters, our efforts, our work, and the more of ourselves we put into our writing, the more personal it becomes.

I’ve been in a writers’ group where a published adult writer lost the plot over what was quite constructive criticism. She could not cope with any criticism at all and fiercely defended her work by making personal attacks on the person who gave the critique. I’ve also seen an author direct a scathing online personal attack against a reviewer because she did not like his review of her book.

But back to my teen writers’ group. Though we’d talked a lot about the purpose and process of critiquing, I must admit I was nervous about how they might cope giving and receiving criticism at their age and stage of social and emotional development. But, as so often has happened as convener of these writers’ groups, I was blown away by their engagement with the process. Their insight was amazing, and the sensitivity with which they delivered their critiques was inspiring.

 These kids adopted the principles of critiquing in such a mature and perceptive manner that they put some of the aforementioned adult writers to shame. They responded intuitively to their peers when they thought the writer may be sharing personal details, they were sensitive and supportive and encouraging of each other.

These kids are going to be amazing writers. I am in awe of them. And incredibly proud of them.

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Plot Pilfering

November 30, 2012 2 Comments

Wanting to join a writers’ group I used to be involved with, a nervous newcomer asked: “What if someone steals my idea?” At the time I thought it an arrogant question and on behalf of the group, was offended by the inference. But shortly after, someone posed the same question to a panel discussing the value of writers’ groups at a writers’ festival I attended. And it came up again in discussion recently. It seems to be a concern that is probably more common than one might think.

It’s worth noting that each of the persons preoccupied with the issue of plot theft, was an emerging writer, fairly early in their writing journey. I guess we all think (or at least, hope) that we are going to write the bestseller that will set us up for the rest of our writerly lives. And I suppose it’s only natural to feel protective of our plot ideas.

But really, when we think rationally rather than emotionally about the nature of writing we realise that, as with reading, writing is a very subjective process. So let’s deconstruct this concept a little. We all have different likes and dislikes, opinions and views, and a wealth of experience that is completely our own. No one else can think and feel exactly like us. We are all individuals. And we all make autonomous emotional and intellectual interpretations of that which we observe, whether it be music, art, dance, literature, etc. We have no choice about this. It’s the human condition.

Two people from the same family, same gender, same sociocultural and educational backgrounds, with the same preferences and views about almost everything, can read the same book and give two completely different responses to the story. Because they are different people who bring their own unique complexities to that which they experience. We think and feel differently. Each of us. If those same two people were to write their life stories, they would write two completely different biographies. See where I’m going here? 

Writers are individuals. It makes no difference whatsoever what we write about, our stories are our stories. And crucially, they are written with our own unique and distinct writing style. Writing ‘style’ is not something that can be taught or replicated (at least not successfully). As writers, we may study and excel at all the technical aspects of writing, such as grammar, structure, voice, point-of-view, tense, etc, but it’s the way in which each individual uses language to communicate these skills—our expression—that creates an individualistic writing style.

There are a few very public examples of writers who pursue litigious action against other writers for stealing their ideas. Author of the very successful DaVinci Code, Dan Brown, was sued over copyright infringement by the authors of a non-fiction book The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail. Apparently the researchers of this book wrote that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that this knowledge was concealed by the Catholic Church. Basically, they accused Dan Brown of using their research to write his book. They lost.

Another case was that of JK Rowling being sued by the author of Willy the Wizard Adrian Jacobs, or at least by his estate given that he died sometime in the 90s. Jacobs wrote of a boy wizard who went to a wizarding school, rode on wizard trains where wizard chess was played; and there was a wizard prison and a special wizard hospital. There was even a portal used to move between worlds, wizard and mortal. And in Goblet of Fire, which was the major point of contention, a wizard challenge that required the use of a bathroom. You could almost say that these two books had the same plot, and given that Willy the Wizard was written some 20 years before Harry Potter, that maybe Jacobs had a point. Except for the writing. The book about Willy the Wizard was 16 pages long and Goblet of Fire was 636 pages long. And one need only to look at the expression and writing style of both books (as well as the other six books in the Harry Potter series) to make assertions about the validity of the claim. It was also dismissed.  

The point of the matter is that a plot idea is just a plot idea. And ideas, theories, information or facts, can’t be claimed or owned. It’s the interpretation of the ideas, theories, information, facts or concepts, and the expression and writing style used to communicate them that matters. So those of you who may be worried about others ‘stealing your ideas’, don’t be. If you are a good writer, you will develop your own unique writing style, which no one else can replicate. And when you write your story, it will be your story.

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Teaching writing: privilege or pain?

November 22, 2012 5 Comments

Like most writers, I have to work to support my writing. Unlike a lot of writers, I get to do something really awesome. I get to teach. Teaching is a wonderful privilege. And while the responsibility of growing and shaping young minds can sometimes be a little daunting, witnessing that light bulb moment when a student grasps a concept or learns a new skill, is a powerful motivator to become even more effective.  And teaching creative writing is no exception.

Prior to my life as a writer, I taught high school computer studies for years before leaving teaching. I spent about five years doing other things before I started taking my writing seriously enough to write full-time.  These days I teach creative writing to high school students and computer literacy to primary school students to support myself while I write.

I value teaching immensely. Not because it keeps me in contact with the demographic for whom I write, and not because it provides me with plenty of plot and character ideas for my novels, though both of these are absolutely true and have immense value and advantage for an author. I value the experience of teaching because despite the fact that I am the teacher, I have learnt so much from my students. Teaching these kids is making me a better writer.

There’s the seven-year-old who hasn’t yet mastered the art of forming letters or writing words with a pencil but who can write paragraphs of a story she has imagined using a computer keyboard; the fifteen-year-old boy who communicates only through grunting supplemented by various other bodily sounds, but who writes beautiful prose about the world as he sees it. The fourteen-year-old girl who always has a smile on her face but who shared her inner turmoil by writing a heart-breaking suicide letter that required immediate intervention, and the twelve-year-old with extreme anxiety issues who cannot speak but writes science-fiction narratives that wouldn’t be out of place in a sci-fi anthology.

Writing gives kids a release—sometimes their only release. It gives them an opportunity to make a connection, not just with the world around them, but with themselves. And in doing so they learn how to utilise an age-old instrument of power—the pen, or keyboard, as it was. No matter that the process of writing is different these days, the power it conveys is the same.

Not so long ago, a sixteen-year-old boy in one of my writers’ groups wrote a story about a kid who had been taught to use drugs at age six. SIX. The narrative told the story of a child living on the streets and being taken under the wing of group of teenagers. It had an intimate knowledge of scoring, and self-administering drugs. But more disturbingly, it told of the trade-off the young boy had to make for the care of the older boys. He wrote that learning to take drugs was the best thing that could have happened to this little boy. The young author had based his story in a city of Australia. I asked him about it. He shrugged and said nothing. I talked generally to the group about authenticity and believability, about real places and events being consistent with those places. In my mind, I was wondering how realistic this kind of story would be in this place (Australia) at this time (2000s). At the end of my time with that group, as I was finishing up at that school, the author told me that the little boy in the story he wrote was him. It was a true story. His story.

I was gobsmacked. This kid had fallen through the cracks in a system designed to protect children, and had survived on the streets by himself for five years. He’d been living in a comparatively stable environment since he was eleven, but (understandably) not without problems both at home and at school. But this boy was alive. He was not in gaol, he was not drug-addicted, and he was not violent. He was a quiet, introspective, albeit sullen boy, who managed to get himself to school every day, maintain friendships and even work at a part-time job. And he wrote. And I am a better person for having read his story.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and there are some stories, true or not, that would not sell because readers could not or would not relate to them. It’s probably true. I used to consider this when I began plotting. I don’t anymore. I don’t care. If these kids can overcome the loss of family, being abused, abandoned, neglected, rejected, and survive to tell their stories, I will read them. And value them. And when I feel inclined to complain about writers’ block or having to work to support my writing, I’ll thank my lucky stars that I have the wonderful opportunity to teach writing to kids who could really use the opportunity to share their stories.

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He did what…? A lesson in cyber awareness

October 27, 2012

A few weeks ago, a ten-year-old hacked into his school’s intranet and began deleting installed teaching programs. He thought it was funny. His teachers did not. They could not get their heads around how or why a child could or would do such a thing. The kid thought he was clever. And he was. He outsmarted his teacher as she went about her usual teaching practice, oblivious to the idea that every time she logged into the school intranet or the Department of Education’s portal, she was being ‘spied on’ by a little boy with playful intentions.

Did the child do the wrong thing? Absolutely. Was he aware of the implications of his actions? No, not at all. He had no idea that what he was doing was hacking, or that in the real world under the Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Act 2011, it is a criminal offence. Nor, I’m sure, did he have malicious intentions. He just thought he was being clever.

So who was to blame for this action? And does it really matter? To answer the first part of the question, the age of legal responsibility in this country (Australia), is ten years old. And if the perpetrator is between 10 and 14 years old, malicious intent needs to be proven before a child can be successfully prosecuted. So, of course, the actions of this particular child were not his fault.

Where then, does the responsibility lie? Is it with the teacher? Partly. But not wholly. Teachers find themselves in the midst of an educational paradigm shift in which their charges, the students they teach, are digital natives. Digital natives are the generation born into the world of technology; they have never lived without it, so have a much greater understanding of technological concepts and uses. Their teachers—Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Gen Ys, have had to adapt to a rapidly emerging digital reality, with varying degrees of success.

There is no denying that teaching has changed. Where once teachers depended on hard-copy textbooks, and wrote on ‘blackboards’ then ‘whiteboards;’ they now use ‘smartboards,’ which are wholly interactive and double as projector screens connected to the Internet  and on which teachers can ‘write,’ ‘highlight,’ ‘click’ and ‘drag,’ and instantly source information about anything, anywhere, in whatever format they want. Students enter kindergarten already knowing how to navigate the digital landscape. And they are enthusiastic and keen to explore the limits to which technology can take them.

Schools have an increasingly crowded curriculum, and for the teachers among you, you know that means more and more responsibility for educating children about almost every facet of the world we live in. But even if the curriculum was restricted to just ‘reading and writing’ — the way students read and write has changed.

Literacy once meant being able to recognise, interpret and make sense of ink-based words on a paper-based page. Not anymore.   Literacy now is about learning to recognise, interpret and make sense of the digital environment. This includes sourcing, consuming, creating and disseminating content in multi-modal formats. And a large part of doing this successfully is understanding how to do it appropriately—and safely.

The digital platform is constantly evolving, so just when (or even before) a teacher or school (or education department) finally gets their head around an emerging technology or concept—it changes. Again. It’s no wonder teachers struggle to get a handle on the way in which children engage with technology when it’s second nature to the students.

So again, where does the responsibility lie? Can we hold parents responsible for the actions of the aforementioned child? Maybe. Partly. Recently I asked a group of six-year-olds who among them had a computer in their bedroom. I was astounded to discover that more than half the class had an Internet connected device (laptop, tablet, PSP, DSI, Wii, Xbox, Playstation, etc) that they used, unsupervised, in their rooms. These kids were surfing the web and viewing YouTube videos by themselves, probably unbeknown to their parents. It’d be akin to sending kids out to play on a busy highway; except parents are more aware of the dangers of playing in traffic.

And therein lay the issue. Parents may not always be aware of the risks and dangers of allowing children unsupervised access to the Internet  It’s not just about the potential for kids to use technology destructively as in the hacking incident, it’s also about predators and fraudsters and other adult criminals who float around cyberspace waiting for unwitting cyber-participants, particularly vulnerable (unsupervised) young people whom they can draw into their webs of deceit and destruction

Yes, parents AND teachers definitely need to be more aware of the way in which their children use technology. So if both are partly responsible, but neither is wholly to blame, then what is the answer? How do we address this issue effectively? We’ve all heard the old adage ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ and it is very much the case here.

Government has a role to play in developing policy and legislation to keep up with the rate of technological change, and community has a role in educating its members about the risks and dangers— in equal balance to the joys and benefits—of the digital world. Education departments have a responsibility to educate their teachers, employers have a responsibility to educate their workers, media has a responsibility to educate its consumers, and parents have a responsibility to educate their children.

So back to the second question, ‘does it really matter?’ Of course, it matters. It matters a great deal. We should be looking at the issue of cybersafety education in the same way that we approach road safety education. We don’t allow children to cross the road as soon as they can walk. We hold their hand and walk with them until they are teens. And by that stage they have participated in lessons about road safety every year at school, they’ve seen posters and TV programs, they’ve entered competitions, played games and done quizzes and colouring-in sheets, they’ve watched TV ads and cartoons—all reinforcing the road safety message and teaching them the ‘what, when, where, why and how’ of staying safe on the road.

This is what we need to be doing with cybersafety. And it is the responsibility of all of us to educate ourselves so that we can educate our kids.

 

Khyiah delivers cyber awareness seminars to parent groups, Meta-Literacy seminars to teachers, and cyber-safety seminars to students. She is also currently writing a teaching program for students in Stages 2, 3 and 4 (Year 3 – 8) addressing these issues. If you would like to book a seminar for your group, or pre-order a teaching unit, contact Khyiah here.

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The Greatest Block of All

September 13, 2012 2 Comments

I’ve written a lot about Writers’ Block on this blog — what it is, why it happens, and how to challenge it. But recently I’ve experienced the ultimate writers’ block, the greatest challenge to my writing life. I say my writing life because for me, my life and my writing are intrinsically connected — one cannot exist without the other.

I’ve said many times that life sometimes gets in the way of writing, writers everywhere would be familiar with what this means. For the non-writers among you, it means things like child-raising, bill-paying (or more pointedly, the work required to raise the funds that make bill-paying possible), house coordinating, people managing, and a myriad of other things.

But what happens when life really does get in the way of writing? And this time, by life, I mean the gift of health that keeps us living and breathing and able to complain about life getting in the way of our writing. What happens when a writer faces a diagnosis that may mean her/his time for writing will come to an end—for good?

The fear is palpable. And I’m not talking about the fear of dying. I dealt with that. I’m talking about the fear of leaving this world without having achieved the one goal I set when I was ten years old and have been working toward ever since. Being a writer.

I mentioned this to a friend recently. “But you are a writer,” she said.

Yes I am. But not the kind of writer I always dreamt of being. Yet. I need more time for that. Suddenly, time for writing seems to be the only thing that matters.

I want to write full-time. I want to get my work out there. I want to be heard. Be read. I want to share the magic of narrative with young people everywhere. I want them to know the amazing power of transformation reading can bring. I want to take them on a journey that frees them, if only for a short time, from the stress and pressure of adolescence. I want them to get lost in my books.

I’ve always plodded along with these goals simmering in the background while I dealt with the reality of…well, life. I guess we take the luxury of life for granted until we are slapped in the face with our own mortality. It’s then that we understand the difference between ‘living’ and allowing life to happen to us.

The choices we make and the action we take—consciously or unconsciously—impact on who we are at any given moment in time. I am not a ‘victim.’ Never have been. I will live to write, so that I can write to live. Until the very last breath I take, no matter when that is.

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