Common Writing Errors--Introduction

Although I left my permanent teaching position late last year, economic considerations meant that when a couple of sessional contracts came up I took them on. The result of this decision is that November is marking month. And because I am dealing with students of a similar standard to previous years, I am seeing the same errors in their work. Many of these also appear in manuscripts I assess privately or through organisations such as Writers Victoria. Consequently, I feel that a discussion of such errors may help beginning/emerging writers avoid them.

Below are the areas I usually cover when advising students and new writers about sources of error:

1.              Presentation/Formatting

2.              Grammar/Language

3.              Content

4.              General Observations/Advice

My intention is to deal with these areas in subsequent posts. However, as a taster of what is to come, I want to deal with one problem I frequently see: that/which confusion. I realise different countries or regions vary their approach to the treatment of—apologies for the jargon—restrictive clauses (those that are essential to the meaning of the sentence) and non-restrictive clauses (those that can be removed without affecting the meaning of the sentence). In Australian publishing, however, ‘that’ usually introduces a restrictive clause and ‘which’ introduces a non-restrictive clause, as in the examples below:

The intruder smashed the statue that was in the hallway.
(There are other statues in the house, but the intruder only broke the one that is in the hallway.)

The intruder smashed the statue, which was in the hallway.
(There is only one statue in the house and it is in the hallway.)

Basically, then, if you use ‘which’, you need a comma in front of it. And if the clause is in the middle of the sentence, you also need a comma after it:

The intruder smashed the statue, which was in the hallway, and then made off with the treasure that was hidden inside.

Does the idea of this series appeal to you? Let me know what you think by posting me a comment. And if you have a suggestion for a topic, please let me know.

Happy reading, musing, writing

Earl

Why Welsh?

In my previous post I mentioned my interests in Celtic mythology and Welsh language and history. These came about for a variety of reasons, some to do with the fact I have Welsh ancestry on my father’s side. My paternal grandmother was born in Cardiff County, Wales, and came to Australia in the 1910s. I remember when I was told this as a child I felt some sort of kinship to the country. My father then said that if I couldn’t roll my r’s like the Welsh do, then I probably had missed out on the gene. I couldn’t, and so for a long time I chose to forget this aspect of my ancestry.

My father was born in Australia, yet people who met him often commented he seemed more English than Australian. This was likely due to the influence of his immigrant parents, his father having been born in Bishop’s Stortford, Essex, England, and who had also come out to Australia in the 1910s. Given my mother was born in Antwerp, Belgium, my heritage wasn’t so definite. And possibly because of this mix and the natural tendency to uphold one’s birthplace above others, for years I considered myself Australian before anything else.

That all changed after my reading of both Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Robert Graves’s The White Goddess and I fell in love with Celtic mythology. The stories and poems comprising the Matter of Britain—Arthur, Taliesin and Merlin, bards and druids—sang to me in a way that others hadn’t. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t roll my r’s. I had Welsh blood in me (and Scottish, when I went farther back in my ancestry); and I could even rationalise my Belgian heritage by pointing out the country was named after a Celtic tribe, the Belgae, some of whom had also settled in Britain.

Since the mid-2000s I have thrown myself even deeper into my love of all things Celtic. I have travelled three times to countries of the Celtic Fringe and have read and researched materials for a Dark Ages novel. I have started learning Welsh through a group operating in The Celtic Club in Melbourne. It is a hard language to learn, especially some of the pronunciations, and my progress is slow, though I am determined to become fluent eventually. My r’s are coming along nicely.

Do I still consider myself Australian rather than English or Welsh or Celtic? That’s a hard question, as it really doesn’t have only one answer. I am Australian by birth and by language usage. I barrack for Australian teams. I hold to Australian egalitarian values. However, even though I have travelled in and through Australian landscapes and appreciated their beauty, I feel more comfortable in Celtic landscapes, the mist, the mountains, the bright and dark green foliage. I prefer autumn, winter and spring to summer.

Since my visits to the countries of the Celtic Fringe, to Wales and Scotland in particular, I now know that deep sense of longing for home the Welsh call ‘Hireath’ (pronounced ‘Here-eyeth’, with a stronger ‘r’). I can’t wait to get back there, for immersion and re-connection. In the meantime, I can at least inhabit it in my imagination, through language learning and through book research and my writing. More about these activities in future posts.

Happy reading, musing, writing

Earl

What to Expect

You might be wondering about the shift in focus of this blog, which is exemplified by the change of name. As I mentioned in my previous post, I took a redundancy package from my teaching job at Box Hill Institute and am now a full-time writer and part-time freelance teacher, editor, manuscript assessor and mentor. The previous blog reflected my teaching emphasis, even if it didn’t quite fulfil the promise I made to discuss how I used The Writing Cycle in my teaching and my own writing. While I still want to discuss that topic, I also want to include other creative areas, so that the blog will become a forum for what interests me, things like Celtic myths and symbols, myths in general, poetry, speculative and literary fiction, Welsh language and history, the Dark Ages, the Matter of Britain, and what is commonly termed the sacred.

There seems to be an agreed perception that in order to make a living from writing (at least initially), one should specialise in one form of fiction, say, whether it be paranormal romance or military SF, and present oneself in social media as a principle exponent of that speciality. For example, one’s blog posts should be about facets of the speciality, or reviews of others in the field, or interesting research titbits, or the actual writing process. I can see the sense in this approach, but I don’t think it is the only one. My own range of research interests is wide and all of them feed into my writing at one time or the other, which itself can be of different forms (poetry, fiction, non-fiction), so I see no reason in narrowing my focus to only one of these interests or one of the writing fields.

My choice of title for this rebooted blog reflects this decision. The word ‘awen’ is Welsh for inspiration, for the muse, and I see my work as responding to whatever the ‘muse’ (however you define this) gives me. I remember reading an interview with Ted Hughes at the time he was made Poet Laureate, and when he was asked what he would write his answer was something along the lines of ‘being faithful to the muse’. I happen to agree with this approach, though, like Hughes and many other writers, I don’t believe in waiting for the muse to give me something. As William Faulkner is reputed to have said: ‘I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning’.

Basically, then, this blog will feature those elements that contribute to my ‘awen project’, my attempt to follow what the muse has given me. I may discuss these ‘givens’, or the research involved in turning a given into a poem or story, or the writing techniques I feel may be useful for myself or for others. I may discuss other interests that are tangential to my experience, exploration and expression of ‘awen’, yet still somehow connected to these. I hope you will enjoy what I have to offer.

Happy reading, musing, writing

Earl

A New Start

Hi Everyone

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything to this blog. Life, as usual, got in the way, and other things had higher priority. In fact, major things have happened to my life, like the fact that in September last year I took a redundancy package from my teaching position at Box Hill Institute.

Over the last year I have been adjusting to life as a full-time writer, which has meant new regimes and new ways of making money. I can't say I have fully acclimatised to my new lifestyle, but at least I have other income streams happening while I concentrate on my writing projects.

Although I am doing some sessional teaching, both in games writing and in poetry writing, I plan to shift the focus of this blog into my new creative directions. What these are I will describe in future posts.

Meanwhile, for those interested in writing poetry, I am teaching a 'poetry for beginners' course at Writers Victoria. Below are links to a course description and an interview I did about poetry, language and publishing. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

Light Up Your Words: Poetry for Beginners

Q & A With Earl Livings


Cheers
Earl

The Next Big Thing

Hi everyone

I realise it has been a while since my last post, but I have had trouble accessing this site. That's all fixed now, in time for me to participate in The Next Big Thing chain interview series. This series features creative writers answering a set of questions about their latest book projects, which are either in development or recently published. Each writer is selected by a previous participant and in turn selects further participants in the chain. I was kindly tagged by Talie Helene and you can read her interview here. Below are my answers:

1.   What is the [working] title of your book?

At the moment, the title of the novel is Phase Shift. I have always envisaged the project as being a standalone book but, as I work on the second draft, I occasionally feel the story idea may need more than one volume. If this turns out to be the case, I will have to come up with individual book titles, while keeping the series title as Phase Shift.

2.   Where did the idea come from for the book?

I have been tinkering with the concept of the Nexer for a number of years. A Nexer is someone who can access a type of mental space that permeates and unscores the reality of the universe in which the story is set. These gifted individuals are story-healers, in that while accessing nexspace they can unblock a person's story-line, so to speak, or initiate a process where the person themselves learns to unblock her/his story-line. Nexers are considered a type of magician by those who have been helped by them and as charlatans by those with a more rational bent, those whose worldview is strictly materialist. So, after years of thinking and tinkering with story ideas, I combined the Nexer concept with the theme of a universe in a state of sudden space-time decay and wrote a first draft in which many other unexpected things came to play.

Image from sfsite.com

3.   What genre does your book fall under?



I like to think of the book as existential space opera, though of course that sort of tag is hard to sell to agents, publishers and stockists (both web and bricks and mortar). I do have a soft spot for that old genre title science fantasy, but again that might be a hard sell, especially as it has fallen out of favour. I could say philosophical science fiction, but in one sense all science fiction has some sort of philosophical basis, however simplistic or unconscious. In this current environment of small sound bites, I might have to stick with speculative fiction, which really doesn't give much away at all.

4.   What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?


Image from fanpop.com

 I don't tend to think in movie references in that way, so my answers are a little hit-and-miss. I have a young heroine, so maybe someone like Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss in The Hunger Games, might be a good fit. The other main characters are a middle-aged male Nexer, a young male gonzo reporter, an Indian mathematician, a late-middle-aged erg-painter, a young male spaceship pilot, and a female alien of indeterminate age. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played John Blake in The Dark Knight Rises, might be good for the reporter, but I can't envisage anyone suitable (yet) for the others.


5.   What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

I have had several while working through the first draft and what I call the interdraft, the thinking about and planning for the next draft. My current one-sentence synopsis is, A guilt-ridden young woman must become a story-healer to stop a crazed AGI, a would-be immortal dictator, and belligerent trans-dimensional aliens from destroying every universe. I'm happy with this synopsis, especially as it is exactly 25 words, which many writing textbooks and teachers recommend as the maximum for defining one's project in a single sentence. Of course, the synopsis is bound to change as I redraft the novel and refine characters, plot and setting.

6.   Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'm only at the start of my second draft, so what happens about publication is still a long way off. My preference is for the traditional publishing route, but in these uncertain industry times, I'm not sure I know which avenue will offer the book's best chance, not only for publication acceptance, but for distribution, marketing, advances, royalties, etc. I am hoping things will be clearer when I finish the novel, the deadline for which is the middle of next year.

7.   How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Several years ago I participated in The Year of the Science Fiction Novel workshop at the Victorian Writers Centre, which is now Writers Victoria. Lucy Sussex convened the bi-monthly sessions in which we workshopped extracts from our projects, discussed writing techniques and approaches, and heard talks by industry professionals. I handwrote the first draft early in the year, over several months, and edited extracts for the workshopping. Subsequent to the course, I transcribed the whole draft and have been doing the interdraft work while submitting other extracts to my writing group for further feedback (Hi, Torcans). I've taken a lot of time to get to the second draft stage, mainly because I was finishing other projects, but I intend to devote myself to this book for the next few months.

8.   What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?



Image from boomtron.com

 Certainly there are many things that have influenced both my writing style and the themes of all my creative work. Books like Dune, Lord of Light, Moby Dick, and The Lord of the Rings. Authors and poets like Arthur C Clarke, Gordon R Dickson, Terry Dowling, Neil Gaiman, Robert Graves, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Hermann Hesse, Robert Howard, Ted Hughes, Ursula Le Guin, H P Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Dylan Thomas, Clark Ashton Smith, JRR Tolkien, A E van Vogt, Karl Edward Wagner, W B Yeats, and Roger Zelazny. Movies like Blade Runner, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The philosophies of Plato and Plotinus. Celtic mythology. But as to which books my story is similar, I'm not sure I know. The philosophical themes point to Hesse (Siddhartha and The Glass-Bead Game) and Zelanzy (Lord of Light and The Chronicles of Amber), while the space opera and science fiction aspects point to Blish, Herbert, van Vogt and, again, Zelazny. As a summation, I would say my story has elements of Dune, Star Wars, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, The World of Null-A, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the Dorsai series and even E C Tubb's Dumarest books. However, I can't point to one or two specific books that contain a number of these elements. If there were one, I probably wouldn't need to write mine.

9.   Who or what inspired you to write this book?



Image from alexholden.net

 As I said above, there are a number of influences on my work. As for what might have directly inspired it, I don't recall a specific moment in which the idea dropped into my consciousness. I have always liked van Vogt's Nexialists and Null-A operatives and also various psychic warriors, if they can be called that, from E E 'Doc' Smith's Lensmen to George Lucas's Jedis. What I liked about the Nexialists was their ability to be generalists and to synthesis specialist knowledge into answers to pressing problems. What I liked about the Lensmen was the sub-group known as Grey Lensmen, who were not beholding to the Lensmen hierarchy and were left to their own devices, were trusted to do things for the good of all, though their processes may not be within Lensmen 'rules'. And what I have never liked about the Jedis is the sense of their only being in the service of the prevailing order (or fighting against it to establish a new order), plus the strict separation between the Light and Dark sides of the Force. Many years ago, I came up wth the name 'Nexer' for my own generalist psychic warriors, though I still hadn't identified their specific skills. (The name was an allusion to van Vogt's Nexialist and also to the sense of a nexus, those important psychic moments in a person's life that a Nexer can read and manipulate.) I then started thinking of a story about an apparent rogue Nexer awaiting execution for helping an indigenous population defend itself against the colonising humans. (Being an Australian, I am acutely aware of the terra nullius doctrine that allowed the British to colonise the continent they had 'discovered' and displace its original inhabitants.) A newly-initiated Nexer is sent to investigate the rogue's behaviour and the first scene I envisaged is when the new Nexer arrives at the planet and is confronted by the local law enforcer, who is a member of a group that has similar talents to the Nexers, but a much narrower range of duty: to the state, only. My realisation of the potential dynamics in their confrontation--state vs individual, science vs mysticism, self vs Self, the human vs the Other--propelled me into further exploring Nexers and their universe.

10.   What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

An immature AGI that has split into two, one part wanting to destroy humanity, one part wanting to help humanity, and both crazed in different ways. A young, scarred woman needing to confront her part in the deaths of her mother, her grandmother and her brother. A young man awakened from cryo-sleep and forced to pilot a hijacked colony spaceship. A gonzo reporter hoping for the story of his career. Nano-enhanced warriors. Aliens who have bonded with the planet they crash-landed on centuries before. A portal between two universes that are each aspects of a single meta-universe, which itself is one of an infinite number of similar structures. As universes collide and destroy each other, the space fleets and the psychic emanations of humanity and the race of trans-dimensional aliens battle it out, while a reluctant female Nexer strives to understand and heal what underlies all the conflict.

One of the benefits I found in doing this interview is that in answering some of the questions I had to examine deeply the genesis and intent of the story. I discovered more about my reasons and inspirations for the novel and gained some insights into the dynamics of the story. So, thanks, Talie, for tagging me and helping me refine some of my ideas.

Now for the next stage of the chain interview process. I approached a number of writer friends and acquaintances but, given we're in the middle of the silly season, some of them haven't got back to me as yet and a couple of them who did were unable to participate for one reason or another. For the moment, then, the only writer I am tagging is E. Markham. If at a later date any of the other writers agree to being tagged, I'll let you all know.

May you have a safe, relaxing and wondrous festive season and I wish you success in all your ventures during 2013.
Happy reading and writing.

Cheers
Earl

To Read or Not to Read?

At the start of each teaching year, I ask my new students about their reading habits and am constantly amazed at some of their answers:

• I don’t read poetry [said in a poetry writing class]


• I only read fantasy [or literary fiction or any other genre]


• I don’t read in [genre] because I don’t want to be influenced


• I don’t read

Some of these answers have a sort of logic, though it is flawed. Yes, they will be influenced by what they read. That’s the whole point. The great masters learnt their craft and art from copying the masters before them and then moved beyond what they had learnt. The great musicians learnt the music of those before them. Even great athletes started off trying to be like their heroes before finding their own style, their unique way of playing. (I can say this from training in and teaching martial arts many years ago.) Why is it that in literature people think they can write well without knowing anything about the art form they practise?

Notice I said ‘write well’. What I am pointing out in this post does not apply to those who wish only to write for themselves and maybe for their family. However, those who come to tertiary classes wanting to learn to write poetry or fiction do so because their aims are generally higher than family praise. They wish to write well enough to be published. So, I am puzzled how students who don’t read in their chosen genre/mode still expect they will be published. How do they know what has gone on before? How do they know the conventions of their genre? How do they know the craft elements of their genre? Only by reading. And by practising. They will learn some of the ‘tricks of the trade’ during their classes, but if they don’t see how those tricks have been used before, they won’t know how they work or why. In other words, they won’t learn how to apply the rules of their trade nor learn when to break those rules. Often they break the rules without realising it. And often they are using the clichés of their genre without realising it, and wonder why they keep getting rejected. Essentially, if what they are saying, and how they are saying it, has all been done before, then their work, no matter how sincere, is likely to be rejected.

As for those who read only in their genre, a different problem arises. Such writers may know the conventions of their genre, but that’s all they know. While I admit some writers have so absorbed their particular genre that they can make a living out of regurgitating the plots, settings and characters (for example, the three Ms of many fat fantasy trilogies: medieval, monsters, magic), I would guess that many of these writers have had experience of other genres and have made a conscious decision to concentrate on one. For those who have not had experience of other genres, I ask, how do they expect to enrich or enliven their genre if they can’t bring something new to it? The New Wave movement in science fiction came about through writers bringing to the old pulp movement their knowledge of literary fiction, and science fiction was the better for it.

The students that puzzle me the most are those who claim not to read at all, or who barely read. Why do they want to be writers? Most writers and poets I know, and know of, were captured by the texts they read as a child, wanted to emulate their favourite writers, were passionate about reading and later about writing. Those who don’t read, I suspect, want to be writers because of a mistaken belief that there lies fame, fortune and sex, or some variation of these. As with those who become famous for being famous, but without doing anything of significance, without working hard at something, such writers expect success without doing much more than write a few words a day. Of course I can write, they say; I’ve been doing it all my life. Well, I’ve been running all my life, too, but I don’t expect to be a champion runner without extensive training and the right set of talents. If I were in a race with champion athletes, or in the ring with a top martial artist, without my having done the requisite training, I would be well beaten. And so it is with those writers who don’t read. Their prose is awkward, vague, even nonsensical at times, or their verse is simplistic, cliché-ridden, and filled with clunky rhythms and rhymes, the forms and shapes used being rough versions of those learnt in school years before.

So, what do I say in class to my students, both those who do read and those who don’t?

1. Read in the genre you wish to write in and read widely in that genre.


2. Read not for enjoyment, but for knowledge: read with attention to what is being done in the text, so you can understand how things are done and why, and then replicate the effects you have found enjoyable. That way you can learn the genre’s conventions, its tradition, and how others have used the rules, or broken them, to produce the effects they wanted.


3. Read outside your genre, so you can find other effects you might enjoy and can bring to your genre.

Happy reading and writing.

Cheers
Earl

Writers, Readers and Fans

Several weeks ago I attended two very different writers' festivals. The first was the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival. The second was the 68th World Science Fiction Convention. I had a fantastic time at both of them: catching up with friends, seeing interesting writers, and learning a few more things about writing and the publishing industry. Yet, though both events featured writers and readers, they had different emphases, and this wasn't because one dealt with mainstream fiction (however that is defined) and one with a particular genre fiction.

I’ve been attending the MWF for over twenty years, and have only missed it once or twice. The first time I went, when it was held at the Kino Cinema, I didn’t know a soul and every time I finished a session I sat on my own, had a coffee and wrote up my notes. Over the years I met more people in the Melbourne literary community and the festival became a chance to see some of them, meet new local and international writers, and discuss the general state of the industry. The heyday of the festival, for me at least, was during its tenure at the Malthouse Theatre complex. Full theatres. Everybody crowded around the bar. Every opportunity to talk to writers I admired or had been impressed by at a session. A community buzzing with creativity and deals and wit and gossip. Yet this high-energy atmosphere slowly changed. As the years rolled on, the festival became more for readers and publishers than for writers. The famous guests were surrounded by their minders, from before they atttended their panels/readings to after they signed books bought by their readers from the well-stocked saleroom. The beginning and developing writers in the audience, who wanted to learn more about the ‘craft or sullen art’ of writing, as Dylan Thomas put it, were being swamped by those readers who were more interested in the juicy lives of the writing celebrities or the upcoming exploits of their characters than in writing habits and influences and the mechanisms of the publishing industry. The tone had changed, had become more commercial. The divide between writer and reader had widened, with the writers becoming like the gods on Olympus and the readers their worshippers. And I have a feeling that the current venue, Federation Square, isn’t helping the matter. Events are held in widely separated rooms and buildings and there’s generally little chance to develop a sense of intimacy, and certainly very little chance to be standing at a bar and finding someone like Isabel Allende or Paul Muldoon ordering a drink next to you.

The recent Worldcon was the fourth Australia has hosted, all of them in Melbourne. I missed the first one, Aussiecon, in 1975, which had as its GOH (Guest of Honour) Ursula Le Guin, but have been to the other three: Aussiecon Two (1985, Gene Wolfe), Aussiecon Three (1999, Gregory Benford) and Aussiecon Four (2010, Kim Stanley Robinson). The divide mentioned above does not seem to exist in the speculative fiction community. The Worldcon is a great big party, where everyone is your friend, or soon will be. Writers who have finished a panel discussion are likely to appear in the audience for the next session. There are no publisher minders. Fans can be also writers, either amateur, semi-professional or professional, and writers were, and often still are, fans. There is a warmth, a camaraderie, at a five-day science fiction convention I haven’t experienced at the MWF, except when I join a group of my friends in a corner for an afternoon of coffee, drink and discussion. The speculative fiction community, possibly because for many years it has been battling for acceptance within the wider literary community, is one big family (though with all the feuds and affairs and alliances that implies) and conventions are like a family reunion. Even though I have drifted in and out of the SF world over the years, I always feel welcomed when I attend a convention, a prodigal son returned, I suppose. The Melbourne Writers’ Festival doesn’t give me the same sense of community. At times it feels more like a business meeting than a place where people are thrilled by the ideas and the discussions and the chance of not only meeting some of their heroes, but also having a long discussion with them, over a drink or during a room party, about their books, the books of their own favourite authors, the canals in Venice or the landscape in Norstrilia .

I suppose one reason for the difference between these two events is the type of organiser involved. SF conventions are organised by fans for fans and for their favourite, yet down to earth, writer heroes. Festivals like the MWF often feel as if they’re organised by publishers to put their wares on show and move as many units as possible. Though I can attend both types and learn much from them, for both my teaching and my writing, I prefer the type where I’m not treated as a customer, but as a participant in an evolving community of imaginative, like-minded souls.

Enjoy your writing.

Cheers
Earl