LiteraryMinded

Buying time: Liz Sinclair on asking for money to write her book

I was very curious when I heard about Liz Sinclair’s project ‘Help Me Write My Book’. Like many writers, Liz has to work to support herself, and of course, work takes time away from what she’s really wanting to do – write that book. My first reaction, honestly, was something along the lines of ‘why does she think she has the right to ask for cash from other people?’ But through email contact, I found that this is something Liz has obviously thought through. I thought some others may have had the same initial reaction as me, so with Liz’s permission, I’m reprinting an edited version of her emails. Do drop me a line in the comments and tell us what you think.

LizLiz says:

One of the reasons I took a year off from work/Melbourne life to come and volunteer in Bali in the first place was to have more time in my life for my writing. Bali is much cheaper to live in, and that was a factor in my decision to come here. My risk seems, in the end, to have been successful as I’m now much-more published and have gained a much higher profile for my writing. I think writers owe it to their talents to think creatively about how to find more time to write.

I don’t mind you asking about how I can ask people for their money. Trust me, the same question has crossed my mind many times. Who am I, etc.? But isn’t this just extension of even being a writer? Who are we to put our words out there? And yes, I did just go out there and ask for it, and most people won’t ask for what they want. I find most writers and artists dreadful at believing in and promoting themselves and asking for what they need or want. I have felt very guilty, at times, when I read stories about kids needing surgery or people losing their homes, but dreams are vital and important too, and I work actively in my other life to help poor families in Indonesia.

I had been asking people for money for two years as a grant writer, so it seemed a short step to asking for myself. There are precious few grants that let you take time off to write your opus, and still pay the rent; they’re highly competitive and often go to established writers. It’s just as crucial for society to support the arts as to alleviate poverty.

Also, I help other writers every chance I get - refer to a publisher, network, talk about their book, etc. I firmly believe that a ‘rising tide lifts all boats.’ A number of newly-established and as-yet unpublished writers have given me money for November. I will help them out, in turn. I am in an unusual situation. Through my networking, and by helping other writers, I have direct access to editors at Random House, Harper Collins and Anvil Press (PI), as well as Insight Publications in Melbourne. So networking, and supporting other writers, works to help ourselves.

I’ve had a number of people tell me that I’m sort of living their dream, and inspiring them. Most of the contributions have come from friends and family, and more than half of the contributions have been over the $10 I asked for, with several at $50, $70 or $100. It will be interesting to see if any of my donors get motivated in their own life and follow through on their own projects. Already, I’ve had one friend decide to make more time to write by sending her eldest to school early. I love inspiring others!

As for fund raising, I’ve raised about $1200, and there’s still promised payments to come in. I’ve got enough to take off November, and part of December. I asked for more than I needed, expecting to be short of my goal.

Since I started my fund raising, I’ve noticed a number of other writers out there also asking for money to support them during November to write a book, but none seemed to have used social networks, or gotten ‘ballsy’ about asking, like I did. But I have to say, I worked in business and retail for many years, so some of these skills have rubbed off on my writing. I think every writer should take a marketing course or read marketing books, ie Guerilla Marketing for Writers.

A friend told me about several bands (Radiohead, Meridian, Porcupine Tree) that raise money from their fans for a new album. The bands then give donors a special edition, signed CD. He suggested I give people something back in exchange for their money, hence the offer to give people who donate a copy of my book once it’s published.

I got the attention of the book editor at The Huffington Post, who’s asked me if I want to blog about raising money to take time off to write my book, then blog the actual writing of it. If this comes about it will hopefully help to get publishers interested.

But now I’m finding an interesting thing: now that I have to write the book draft, I’m getting incredibly nervous. Part of the reason I set it up this way was to force myself to sit down and do it. I can’t back out now, or I’ll lose face and disappoint people. I wonder if one reason we don’t ‘make the time’ or ‘find the time’ in busy lives to write our great works is because of fear, not a lack of time. Theodore Sturgeon wrote his short stories in 15 minutes every morning when he was starting out and working as a steelworker all day.

You can follow Liz on Twitter, to see how it all pans out.

Chairing panels at writers’ festivals: a few things I’ve learnt

ubud

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 ‘Blogging, Dissent & Solidarity’ session. Kadek Adidharma, Dian Hartati, yours truly, Ng Yi-Sheng & Antony Loewenstein. Pic from official festival Facebook page.

I’ve attended several writers’ festivals over the last three years, and in the past year have begun to chair or sit on panels at some of these. I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learnt about moderating, through observation and experience.

Prior to the festival:

  • Source you panelists’ latest books as soon as possible. Read them! And don’t just read them – take notes, gather biographical info, and gather a few facts about where they’re from (country, city, culture etc.) It helps to contextualise the talk, and helps you to understand them and their work. If you have time, read their back-list titles also.
  • Establish contact with the panelists via email a few weeks before the session. Ask an open question or two relating to the panel. Ask them also if they would like to contribute any ideas. Do make sure you find out what is the thing they most want to talk about in front of an audience and include it in your questioning. After you’ve established these few important things, closethe email conversation before it gets too thick. If you discuss too much beforehand, the session will lack freshness and spontaneity. Be careful with overbearing personalities – you must call the shots and make the decisions in the end on how the conversation will be steered, so there’s balance. Some writers do like to know how the session will run (so they can prepare a few notes) – give them your outline in brief, but don’t give them specific questions, or else on the day it will feel rehearsed, and they’ll end up stressed out if they haven’t talked about everything they were prepared to talk about.
  • When you’re communicating, also ask what they’re sick of talking about (and then decide whether it’s still worth asking for the audience’s sake). Also ask what they never get asked, and would like to.
  • Don’t meet all together until just before the session, again to preserve freshness, interest, curiosity towards each other, and spontaneity. Put your panelists at ease before the session. Ask again what their hot topics are, so they know you’ll be covering them.
  • My preference is for writing down open questions relating to the topic, as well as more specific ones relating to the works of each author (and the links between each of their works). Many people use mind-maps instead. How you prepare what you’re going to ask is up to you. They may change during the session (see below). 
  • This is more one for directors and programmers, and a hard one to get right, but in my experience, large panels (of more than four or so) only work if all the guests bring different points of interest/disparate backgrounds and experiences to the panel, or come at the discussion from different angles. Otherwise, when moderating and trying to give everyone a say, the session can end up being very repetitive. If panelists are too similar, they’ll just nod and repeat what the last person said, which isn’t great for the audience, nor does it make the authors look original or interesting.

chair

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 ’Global Nomads’ session. Pic - Ruby Murray.

During the session:

  • Panelists will most of the time come to the stage with something burning to get off their chest, in relation to their work/themselves and/or the topic at hand. Even though your carefully planned questions, or the direction of your conversation will lead you to this gem (something you’ve either acknowledged or sparked in the email contact), they are often so keen to say it, and not forget to say it, that they’ll give the game away early (even if it has nothing to do with the direct question you’ve asked). There are a couple of ways to try and counter this. Perhaps a quick word to the panelists beforehand, letting them know they can trust that you will get to this *important thing*. Or during the session, if they go into it too early, attempt to ease them out slightly, by saying something like ‘I’d really like to talk about that a bit more in a minute, but other guest, what do you think of the question I was originally asking?’
  • It’s fine for a moderator to have their own opinion on the topic but the panel is not about them. If you have something of related interest to share with the audience, frame some of your questions anecdotally ie. ‘I know at Bookseller+Publisherwe get bla bla bla, have you all found this is the case in your bla?’ Then prompt elaboration on the answers.
  • During the session feel free to scratch out questions and write new ones. Pay attention to your panelists and bounce off any juicy points of interest. Keep in mind the topics that are most important to them, and those of interest to the audience.
  • Some moderators use too many quotes and they just end up looking like smart-arses: ‘I’m more intelligent than the audience members and maybe even this author because I remember all these quotes’. I love a session with one or two really well-placed quotes, but any more than that is kinda pretentious.
  • 15-20 minutes of audience question time is good, but keep an eye on the audience, particularly if it’s a hot topic (you may want to let them at the panel earlier). Also, have plenty more questions ready if there are no hands raised at first (they can be shy) then go back to them. Also, if one hot-stuff author is getting asked all the audience questions, play off it to ask the other authors a similar thing (so it’s nice and even). eg. Audience member ‘So, famous author, would you ever consider going out with me?’ The author answers ‘probably not’. Then you say to the other panelists: ’What about you not-so-famous author and other not-so-famous author, have you ever dated a fan?’ etc.
  • A very obvious one, but one I personally battle (and know how bad it sounds from sessions I’ve attended) – avoid ‘ah’ and ‘um’ as much as you can.
  • Pay attention, stay interested and focused on your panelists and the audience. Take a risk – ask them something that’s hard for you to ask. Chances are, the audience members are also wondering about this too. Have fun – seriously, you’re having a conversation with talented and (hopefully) fascinating people. Show them you’re enthusiastic to be there. If you’re engaged, the audience is much more likely to be engaged.

Thanks to Adelaide’s Format Festival, Melbourne’s Emerging Writers’ Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Newcastle’s National Young Writers Festival and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival for inviting me to participate this year.

Avatar: a mash-up

This piece is a mash-up of an undergrad essay from a couple of years ago, plus present thoughts, imaginings and speculation on the narrative of self in a virtual environment.

codeStorytelling is as old as humanity. The human has always actively projected him/herself into realms of fantasy (through song, art, drama, writing). Modernity advanced the visual aspect of imaginative adventure with diorama and panorama displays, museums, and the invention of photography.

From here on, global culture = visually excessive.

Current experience = deterritorialisation through photography, cinema, advertising, television and the internet. It has become necessary to visually immerse ourselves in narratives.

In a complex, rhizomatic pastiche of ‘real life’, one may construct an ‘avatar’ (a digital version of themself) and physically control this avatar in their explorations of the new world. It is both a phantasmagorical escape, a facade for the reality of alienated individuals, recreating themselves (in a new environment as a modernist ‘I’). But it is also a site of appropriation, subversions, contradictions and of course, commercialism.

There is no centre. One’s avatar may have the option of flying, to cover large distances.

In a heterotopic sense, the mind is engaged within the spatial explorations of the avatar – within three-dimensional virtuality (while the body is on firm ground). Physical room + virtual head = modernist ‘montage’.

This space inside the computer screen, an interaction with computer screens the world over, is hyperreal. Because while the objects and mobilities are often symbols (representatives of real life things) they are in fact ‘created’ from nothing but strands of numbers. Their workable reality effectively ‘replaces’ the things they are representing. They are simulacra, and this is emphasised by the fact that someone will actively create an avatar to ‘be amongst’ this new reality, in effect making even themself into a simulacrum.

There is not much need for a system of order, as De Certeau discusses with the city, because there is no sickness, no waste, no excrement, no death, and no bodily necessities. Shelter, food, sleep, are not necessary. It is Donald’s ‘un espace propre’.

Foucault describes a type of utopia –

…something like [a] counter-site… a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.

A utopia is still grounded in real life modernist principles, the advancement of oneself within technology – by property and finances (perhaps ’social credit’ here).

Foucault’s heterotopias and the internet:

A crisis heterotopia exists for those who are in a crisis in ‘normal’ society, thus, they retreat to the formation of their own self and narratives.

A heterotopia of deviation could be related to the sexual aspects of the internet – people engaging in acts that they are unable to in real life.

A juxtapositional heterotopia ties in with the post-modern aspect of appropriation. Several sites that are incompatible in real life may be joined.

It is a heterochrony as it has its own time structure.

It is also a heterotopia with varying points of access.

The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains… Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned… Or else… their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.

Which do you think it is?

The individual is in a mode of excorporation – utilising a product (computer) to subvert the dominant system (not participating in real life and civic space).

Archetypal cyberpunk sardonically sends up the society of the frenetic information age, but the cyber-environment itself is a given, almost an object of desire… Cyberpunk characters are in a transcendent state when they’re in cyberspace. To be deprived of cyber-reality by burn-out or misfortune is almost an exile from Eden. (Watson, 2003, p. 156)

The internet also gives residents who may be reclusive or marginalised figures in real life the chance to be part of an imagined community.

[T]he internet is… essentially liberatory: if it is not under some centralised control, it can only be the provenance of free individuals and small groups, in an egalitarian world where the individual is unhindered by boundaries of nation, class, gender or property (Thwaites, Davis & Mules).

There is the argument that too much interaction online and an overstimulation of the visual could result in a loss of tangibility. The ‘schizophrenic exchanging of identities’ could also result in ‘dehumanisation’, the exact thing the science-fiction film often warns against. This could also be referred to as a contradiction between the site’s promises, and its denials. The cyberpunk novel, in a more post-modern fashion, embraces the consequences of this – the possible inevitability of it in the face of capitalist commodification. It could be argued that as a transgressive space, the internet is actually an escape from the dehumanising sphere of real life capitalism. It is a place to communicate unboundaried.

While one can be transported to places they cannot physically visit without considerable expense, the internet also reinstates other imagined communities and places of belonging.

The internet can be subversive by naturalising images that are ‘unnatural’ in real life. Cartoon avatars, abbreviated language (or created/altered languages i.e. ‘I can haz…’). Online, these are ‘natural’ and thus, these symbolisations are transgressive to real life ‘natural’ order. They are, in a post-modern sense fragmentary, indeterminate (can be changed at will) and distrusting of ‘totalising’ discourses (Harvey).

The internet goes further than film, television, literature and video games by allowing an individual to not just create a character, a modern self, but create a narrative. What is striking is that this is the path of real life. We are creating ourselves and we are constructing our path. (Is a duality of self/multi-projections of self our condition anyway? But online, the less normative self finds more spaces for expression/collection/acceptance?) On the internet there are less obstacles in the way of our constructed narrative, and there is variety. And on the internet, there is an off button.

References 

Baudrillard, J 1988, ‘Simulacra and simulations’ in M Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: selected writings, Polity, Cambridge.
De Certeau, M 1985, ‘Practices of space’ in M Blonsky (ed.),
On signs, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Donald, J 1995, ‘The city, the cinema: modern spaces’, in C Jenks (ed.),
Visual culture, Routledge, London.
Fiske, J 1989, ‘The jeaning of America’ in his
Understanding popular culture, Unwin & Hyman, Boston.
Foucault, M 2006, ‘Of other spaces’, in N Mirzoeff (ed.),
The visual culture reader (2nd edn), Routledge, London.
Harvey, D 1991,
The condition of postmodernity, Blackwell, Cambridge.
Olalquiaga, C 1992, ‘Lost in space’ in her
Megalopolis: contemporary cultural sensibilities, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Thwaites, T et al. 2002,
Introducing cultural and media studies: a semiotic approach, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills.

Guest review: Lorelei Vashti on Linda Neil’s Learning How to Breathe

learning-how-to-breathe9780702237348
UQP
September 2009 (Australia)
Review by Lorelei Vashti

When I was first offered this book to review I thought: Well, Ms Meyer, it seems that not only are you literary-minded but you’re also literally minded, because what you have given me here is a book about a Brisbane girl returning home to her family. Which, Angela—as you very well know—is the very same situation I was in when you flung this book at me. However, when I started reading I realised that maybe not everything in this world is about me after all, and once I got over the shock of that I was able to appreciate that Linda Neil’s story is very much her own, and a beautifully rendered one at that.

Learning How to Breathe is a memoir, the debut of musician-radio producer, Neil. It traces her relationship with her ailing mother, whom she is suddenly called home to take care of after years of being away. Using interviews with family members, stories from other relatives and friends, and of course, her own memories, Neil recounts what happens over the next decade as she witnesses her mother’s deteriorating health and records their experiences in various caring facilities. A shared love of music is the bond that helps mother and daughter reconnect during this difficult time, and Neil’s examination of their changing relationship is thoughtful and tender.

The childhood home is described with detailed affection. Neil’s mother, Joan, was a singing teacher and taught students out of her house in St Lucia, Brisbane, so the five children grew up surrounded by music. One of the nice touches about the book is Joan’s singing advice (which was published in various industry newsletters over the years) scattered throughout the story, helping us hear her voice in harmony with the voice of her daughter.

Neil plumbs her family history to understand where she has come from. Her self-characterisation as a bohemian-wild-child, who spent her youth playing electric violin on the streets of Sydney and living in the hills of Byron Bay before coming home as the prodigal daughter, seemed to me a little heavy-handed to begin with. But as the story and her relationship with her mum grows stronger, Neil seems to become clearer about her own development, and the writing grows too. By the end, I was overawed by the magnificent moments that fill the final half of the book—moments illustrating a family’s love.

What came across most beautifully for me in Neil’s writing is the way that she and her four siblings seemed to share and balance the role of caring for their mother over the many years of her illness. She skillfully depicts the ways each child is able to contribute their very different strengths. I adored these moments. The final few chapters are completely breathtaking, and as a reader you feel much rewarded at that point.

This book is about love, and the multifarious ways it can be expressed. It’s a book for anyone who has had to decide between Lorelei_photocaring for a loved one or institutionalising them. It’s a book for those who enjoy truthful stories, stories about discovering the light within the darkness, stories about music, and stories about Brisbane girls returning home to their family.

Lorelei Vashti is a writer and book editor with no fixed address, but that doesn’t mean she’s homeless. She swans around here in her dressing gown and here in her more professional attire. God knows what she wears here but it can’t be pretty.

And the winner is…

Twitter user @whymicesing (Michelle Farran) is the winner of the double pass to the Speakeasy Cinema screening of Obscene: A Portrait of Barnet Rosset and Grove Press, along with a burgers and bevvies. Michelle’s answer was My Secret Life and Tropic of Cancer. Cheers for your entries! Come along anyway if you like - ticket details are in the previous blog post.

Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press – Melbourne screening (win tickets!)

The preview:

Obscene is a film biography of Barney Rosset, the influential publisher of Grove Press and the provocative Evergreen Review.  He was the first American publisher of Samuel Beckett, Kenzaburo Oe, Tom Stoppard, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X. He also battled the government to overrule the obscenity ban on groundbreaking works such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch. And apparently, like many brilliant people, the energetic publisher was also self-destructive.

Obscene_poster_smlThe film features Barney Rosset himself, Amiri Baraka, Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Al Goldstein, Erica Jong, Ray Manzarek, John Rechy, Peter Rosset, John Sayles, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and Malcolm X. With music by Bob Dylan, The Doors, Warren Zevon and Patti Smith. More info here.
 
‘No wonder Rosset was behind some of the central court struggles against censorious US standards for both literature and movies. He consorted with yippies and Black Panthers, produced close friend Samuel Beckett’s only film (1965’s Film), and was called a “tragic hero” by his own analyst (one of many). He is an interesting enough guy that one wishes co-directors Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor’s admiring portrait was longer…’
~The San Francisco Bay Chronicle

If you’re in Melbourne, Speakeasy Cinema is screening Obscene as part of the Anode festival at 8pm, Monday 2 November (1000 £ Bend, 361 Lt Lonsdale St). Tickets are available from Moshtix and include the film, plus a burger and beverage (you can also choose film-only). The DVD is also available from Madman, for those not in Melbourne.

LiteraryMinded also has a double pass (including the burgers and beer) to give away to this screening! To enter the draw, you must name two of the books Barney Rosset published. Titles only are fine. No need to put authors. Leave your answer as a comment on this blog, or tweet your answer to me (@LiteraryMinded). You must enter by 5pm AEDST Wednesday the 21 October 2009. One answer per person please. I will allocate each correct answer a number and use a random number generator to determine the winner. Good luck!

10 things about Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2009

After Ruby J Murray’s On Writing in the World: Ten Things About Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2009.

DSC037341. Flying over the top end – veiny, crater-filled land, mercury lakes and billabongs. The corny sea creature carpet at Darwin airport where there’s a smoking area and men in matching shirts drinking VB. Realising in the past year-and-a-half I have only ever travelled alone.

2. Roosters crowing at night as I’m tucked-up in a King size bed under a canopy, wishing I had an extra week or more to absorb this place and to write. There’s a pool and and heat and a week of conversations about Kenyan forts and Indonesian princesses and the whole globe as a home. The room is where Richard Flanagan stayed for a month to write. I can feel its potential.

3. Street cracks and smell of sewers and incense and the contrast of the street to this party in a mansion where there’s a boulder in the pool. Pulling mystery meat off a bone at a long dining table I’m sharing with one. Later – writers of every age and nationality dance barefoot – cocktail-fueled – to 60s/70s tunes and one ‘Billie Jean’, the most popular and strangely universal song.

DSC037464. In conversation with Tom Cho, the Global Nomads and Blogging, Dissent and Solidarity panels – my official connections, the hours of preparation at home and they go by quickly though satisfactorily. Engaged faces in the audience seen at the bookshop later. The realisation that it was three years (a short time, a life time) since I was audience only. Ubud Writers and Readers Festival was actually the first festival I attended. I remember thinking ‘I’d love to do that one day’.

5. Suka Duka is the theme of the 2009 festival – compassion and solidarity. With sadness comes light, with male comes female, solar/lunar and so on. The ‘locals’ (ex-pats who have lived in Bali for a number of years) are worried about the American influx. The theme of colonialism is raised in many panels and discussions – not just colonialism in the past sense, but in the sense of commercialisation, consumerism, Americanisation. One taxi driver says I have beautiful skin. White with ‘no wrinkles’.

DSC038116. Lloyd Jones says on the short story – ‘I think you have to be prepared to fail, to write something interesting’.

7. I am asked at the bookshop. ‘Are you related to Stephenie Meyer? She’s a writer too.’

8. Something I learn: sodomy and oral sex are illegal in Malaysia. Middle class Malaysians are somewhat protected by class. Transgender people are more vulnerable. In Bali, apparantly, there was no problem – and the gay clubs and organisations only arised when more foreigners entered the island. Something was segregated which wasn’t before. Some expressions used instead of ‘coming out’ in other languages have the English translation of ‘the hole is broken’ and ‘the seed has blossomed’.

9. On a panel called Meet the Australians Tom Cho and Arnold Zable thoughtfully debate short vs long form, art vs writing and so forth. At the party later I see them talking at length by the pool, a young and an established Australian writer no doubt continuing their discussion.

10. Coming home with a few keepsakes – books, of course, and too much washing and work to catch up on. A note in my journal: ‘I need to contribute something of worth.‘ And every time I have a conversation, read a book, meet someone new, and travel some place – I know a little bit more about what it is I can do.

(pictured: the top end; Hindu offerings on the street in Ubud; some books bought on my trip)

Adam Ford on life, superheroes, poetry, his Twitter novel and The Third Fruit is a Bird

3rdfruit1Who is your favourite superhero and why?

I’d love to say it’s some less-well-known-to-the-general-public superhero like Machine Man or Metamorpho, but to be honest it’s a tie between Superman and Spider-Man, partly because their costumes are so striking and colourful, partly because they’re both nice-guy superheroes who always try to use their powers to help people and do the right thing, and partly because their comics, when done well (like Amazing Spider-Man #1-36 and All-Star Superman #1-12), are just plain straight-up gee-whiz fun.

Plus: flying guy with laser eyes and bouncy dude who sticks to walls. What’s not to like?

Who is your favourite poet?

I always find this question tricky and bat it away with a list. Some poets whose work I love  include Jas H. Duke for his straighforward storytelling and cynical humour, Stephen Dobyns for his blend of fantasy and the everyday, and James Tate for his restrained surrealism. I’m also a big fan of alicia sometimes for her science-geek tendencies and palpable passion, and David Prater for his playfulness and ability to accurately capture 21st century life.

I’ve just recently developed two new poetry crushes, on US poet Bob Hicok, who has a great eye for both engaging personal narrative work and playful flights of imagination, and on Australian poet LK Holt, whose work appeals to me for its grounding in both the historical and the scientific.

Tell me about the mining of childhood?

I don’t do it deliberately, if that’s what you’re asking. In fact I never really thought about it until you asked, but I can see why you’d ask something like that after reading my poetry.

I’ve always tried to keep in touch with what you might think of as a child’s way of seeing things, which is to say that I try to look at things with fresh eyes, with an open mind and a sense of curiosity and a willingness to let the imagination run wherever it wants to run. That way of seeing isn’t exclusive to children, of course, but when I tap into that, it can be a good way to come up with an idea for a poem.

Poems like ‘Infinity Plus One’, which is a mashup of every playground myth about love, and ‘You Should Have Killed the Monkey First’, which starts with an eight-year-old’s insight into why the baddies never won on superhero cartoons, are good examples of that way of doing things.

I do take other approaches with my poems, but it’s a fair cop to say that there’s some kind of childhood-inspired thread running through them, for sure.

AdamFord2Is love and longing the stuff of poetry?

Not necessarily. I mean, it can be… These days I find that stuff pretty hard to write about. I’ve cranked out a decent chunk of wistful love poems in my time – both of the unrequited and requited sort, but having done a bit of that stuff, I find it really difficult to come up with new and interesting ways to tackle such universal themes without delving into cliche or repeating myself.

My current preference is to try to approach poems with more specific, less big-question subjects in mind, like ‘what if someone got all of the superheroes’ powers all at once?’ or ‘what’s it feel like to race your bike to the train station with only five minutes until the train leaves?’

What are the best moments?

The ones that you are aware of while they’re happening.

Will you share a poem from The Third Fruit is a Bird?

You mentioned that you liked ‘Received Wisdom’, so let’s go with that. Here’s a bit of that childhood-mining, then:

Received Wisdom

Chewing a greylead pencil could give you lead poisoning. Writing on your hand in biro could give you blood poisoning. Philip Odlum ate Clag. Everyone else ate playdough. If you ran with scissors you’d trip and stab yourself. If you swallowed an apple-pip an apple tree would grow in your stomach. Those yellow flowers with sweet-tasting stems? A dog pissed on them. Fight behind the shelter-sheds. Will you get with my friend? Last year a kid fell off the monkey-bars and broke her arm. Another kid got hit in the eye with a tennis ball. His eye fully fell out. It was just hanging there on the end of the nerve. If you ate the crusts of your sandwiches your hair would go all curly. Meat pies were made of kangaroo. Kentucky Fried Chicken was really rabbit. Hot dogs were full of rat poo. Sitting down while doing a wee would turn you into a girl. If you held on and didn’t go to the toilet, and you fell down the stairs, your bladder would burst and you would die. When a man and a lady love each other very much they hug each other in a special way. That’s where babies come from.

Tell us about your Twitter novel – what and why?

I’m writing a story in 140-or-less-character instalments using twitter. It’s called ‘Aramis Fox’. It’s the story of a guy who gets superpowers and tries to work out where they came from at the same time as working out what to do with them. It’s updated fairly regularly (here), with a story-so-far version in a slightly more easily read format here. I try to update it at least every three days, and so far I’ve been reasonably successful.

I started it because I’d seen serialised fiction done online by other writers – using twitter and blogs – and I thought it would be an interesting thing to do. It was also a way to kind of trick (or embarrass) myself into committing publicly to writing something on a regular basis. I don’t have much spare time for writing at the moment, so the micro size of twitter posts made the task seem quite doable.

I’m hoping to learn something about the way I write (and the way I can write) from the process. So far I’m pretty happy with the way it’s worked out. There are things that I’m doing quite naturally to work within the restraints of this format – the brevity, the regularity, the comparative improvisation – that are different from the way I normally approach writing.

When I’m working on a post I tend to rewrite it a few times to get it to the right length and to make sure it gets across the point I’m trying to make. I think this close revision-in-progress of every sentence has produced some interesting results. It reminds me – if you’ll forgive the hubris of the comparison – of what Richard Brautigan said about teaching himself to write poetry so that he could learn to write a good, strong sentence. Once he was confident he knew how to write a good sentence, only then would he start writing a novel. You can see that approach in the muscularity and poetry of his prose writing, and I like to think there’s something similar happening with this story.

One of the most satisfying things, though, is the distinct sense of the story moving forward and making progress – however slow it may be – that comes with uploading each new post.

Words are cool because…

…they’re the perfect building block: you can carry as many with you as you need, there’s an inexhaustable supply, their variety is almost incalculable and they fit together in an infinite number of ways.

Visit Adam Ford’s great blog here.

Guest review: Elena Gomez on Mic Looby’s Paradise Updated

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September 2009 (Australia)
Affirm Press

If you didn’t already know that Mic Looby was once a Lonely Planet writer and editor, it’s not difficult to guess, reading his debut novel, Paradise Updated. In it, the satirically named ‘SmallWorld’ publishers dominate the guidebook industry and the bloke who made them what they are today, legendary Robert Rind, expert on the island nation of Maganda, has reached his use-by-date.

Enter the adoringly awkward Mithra, SmallWorld editor, with weaknesses for Mr Wrong and the muffin trolley. She’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime – to replace Rind and write the updated version of the Maganda guidebook, known affectionately (or scathingly) as The Bible. But the big guidebook authors come with matching egos, and Rind’s is the biggest. He is hilariously disillusioned with his status as the man who put Maganda on the tourist map (while being utterly clueless about all things Magandan). In every way a mess of a human being, Rind is impossible to hate.

Mithra, on the other hand, is one of those curious characters that manages to be endearing without ever doing much. Her character works, mainly, because everything that could possibly go wrong happens to her. And it’s damn funny. Anyone who’s been overseas is familiar with the frustration and despair that can sometimes accompany a holiday. And Mic Looby never lets up.

He never gives his characters a break, which, while entertaining to read, is also incredibly exhausting. From Mithra’s sweaty ride to the town of Bahala on the Changra Paste Express, to the horrendous combination of inner thigh chaffing and mosquito bites, we come to understand our heroine’s resentment at being thrust into the less than glamourous world of travel writing.

Then we get these beautifully crafted sentences (about baggy shorts of all things):

‘There was so much air rushing in and out it felt as if there was nothing at all between his soft, pink shame and the outside world.’ (p85)

Paradise Updated is an intelligent read, and more than a little funny. But it’s not a book to take your time with. It’s super fast, and may cause repressed memories of travel horrors to resurface. But apart from all this, a fantastically written memoir – err, I mean, fiction – about the glossy, greedy, globalised industry of travel book publishing.

elenaElena Gomez is an aspiring writer, blogger and journalism graduate turned publishing noob. She discovered she could write when she won the QLD Courier Mail Young Reviewer of the Year Award 2000, age 12, with a review of Luke’s Way of Looking by Nadia Wheatley. She now writes for www.withextrapulp.com.au

All the somebody people (a round-up of some lit stuff going on here, there, everywhere)

DSC03741Here’s 5th Wall’s most excellent wrap-up of This is Not Art and the National Young Writers Festival. And here are some more of Estelle’s awesome interviews from NYWF.

Katie Jacobs’ dispatches from Ubud, are being featured on Beattie’s Book Blog. Bookman – I met your lovely correspondent, hopefully one day I’ll meet you too!

I’ll blog more about some of the UWRF writers I’ve met after the festival is over, but Wena Poon is someone I’ll mention now, I shared airport transfers with her (and with Shamini Flint). I’m interested in reading Lions in Winter, which is available in Australia through Salt Publishing. Another reason I want to read her writing is that I just checked my email and, I hope she doesn’t mind me extracting from it, but you’ll see why: ‘You posted a David Bowie 1972 video.  I love him from that period!  In The Proper Care of Foxes, a character plays “Starman” on a loop until his friend begs him to stop.  Another character in the book dresses up as Bowie in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.  I guess he will always be evergreen.’ Indeed! More about her books can be found here.

Seriously, It’s hard not to rave about everyone I’ve met and seen right now, but I’m on very limited time. I promise I’ll elaborate back home.

Curious – just received word that Marieke Hardy is going to write the first (is it really the first?) Australian mobile book for the Age, called Vigilante Virgin:

From October 12, in an Australian first, a 20-episode tragi-comedy by cult writer Marieke Hardy will be available via your mobile phone. Subscribe through a simple SMS, and receive morning instalments of this surprising tale.

Diverting and engaging, Marieke’s story is one of an unlikely friendship forged within a vigilante group that will glue readers to their mobile phones.

At 7am each weekday from October 12 to November 6, subscribers will receive, via an exclusive web link in an SMS, an exciting chapter of Marieke’s 20-part story. To subscribe to this Australian first in mobile books, simply text “Marieke” to 19700043.

The Lifted Brow no. 6, in which I share page space with David Foster Wallace (!) is now available for pre-order.

My buddy Estelle at 3000 Books has written about the Emerging Writers Festival Reader, that I’m also in.

So, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Herta Müller. Last night I found myself sitting just across the way from Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. I sipped a margharita, marvelled at his distinctive hair-do, and encouraged my new friend Ng Yi-Sheng to say hello to him. I felt I didn’t have the right to as I’m not very familiar with his work. Yi-Sheng eventually did. Yi-Sheng is on my Blogging, Dissent and Solidarity panel on Sunday, and he blogs here.

I’ve mentioned Ruby Murray’s blog before, but I must mention it again. I have had brief catch-up chats with her here in Ubud – she’s an evocative writer and I love her recent post about Jakarta. See here.

Okay, that will do for now! This afternoon I’m sitting on an informal panel called ‘Meet the Australians’ where I basically will chat about myself and what I do. Tomorrow the real fun begins, with the Q&A with Tom Cho, and my ‘Global Nomads’ panel. At the party last night Arnold Zable and Mohezin Tejani told me thy have already nicknamed themselves Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I suppose John O’Sullivan might be the Cheshire Cat? And I’ll definitely be Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole!