Novel Writing

Write about what you know … 3 authors who recently did just that!

Three colleagues who assisted me in getting my writing off the ground, have just published new works: Dina Davis with A Dangerous Daughter (Cilento Publishing), who avoided lockdown and actually had a book launch in Darwin recently; Helene Grover missed out by a hair’s breadth to publicly launch her memoir, Sometimes the Music (Cilento Publishing), before lockown intervened; and Geraldine Star, who has just published her debut novel, Shee-Oak on Amazon.

A DANGEROUS DAUGHTER is a brave and inspirational story about healing from a mysterious mental illness set in Australia in the 1950s. Ivy, a teenager from an immigrant Jewish family, is on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to survive undiagnosed anorexia nervosa. After failed and sometimes brutal attempts of medicos to trial a cure, Ivy’s family sends her away to relatives in Perth, where hope becomes possible for Ivy through psychoanalysis. Drawing on true events from the author’s life, A Dangerous Daughter will resonate with people of all ages and cultures who have endured the shame and blame of this misunderstood disorder.

“Through deftly combining her life experience with fiction in A Dangerous Daughter, Dina Davis provides a window into the much-misunderstood eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, and the complications that surround it.”

“Dina Davis’s courage in creating this book will be a gift to many.” Dr Dianne Moses, Physician

Helene Grover’s SOMETIMES THE MUSIC is another bravely honest narrative; in places poignant, funny, adventurous, and, in turn, expressing a certain vulnerability. Sometimes the Music presents the captivating lives of Helene Grover and Serge Ermoll, two dynamic individuals, children of migrants from Paris and Shanghai, who land separately in Australia, where they ultimately find each other, and the music of Rock’n Roll and jazz, which bonds them together through difficult times. Helene says: “Some people plan their life. I fell into my action packed one.”

Geoff Kluke – Australian Jazz Legend, writes: I loved Helene’s book and you will too. Couldn’t put it down. She brings to life so many of those fabulous Jazz Legends and Characters many of whom are sadly no longer with us. The stories are so fascinating and entertaining. It brought a smile to my face to be reacquainted with many of them once more.

These two authors have been part of writers’ groups for many years, the most recent one, linked to their current publishing success, being Randwick Writers’ Group, convened by Dina Davis. They have both been supported and published by Cilento Publishing, recommended by this author for all publishing and layout needs.

And then there’s Geraldine Star, also linked to Randwick Writers’ Group and others, who has taken the courageous step to self publish with Amazon, becoming an Indy author with her debut novel, Shee-Oak (Star Monde Australia). The lovely cover and layout are by Green Avenue Design, part of Cilento Publishing.

SHEE-OAK by Geraldine Star is a modern drama and testimony to the power of a stranger to undertake a troubled journey through alcohol, pills and romance to help transform a difficult young woman’s life.

A twist of fate on a rural back road begins an intergenerational story, in which vivid Aussie characters jump off the page with their personal battles, goals and changed hearts and lives. This is an authentic Australian story and voice with outback locations in which the dust and nature gets under your skin as you read.

Two women share a volatile adventure across the drought-stricken rural Hay Plain to Adelaide for a music festival. The transformative lure of pills, alcohol and romance drives them on with the possibility of a veritable explosion and tragic ending looming on the horizon for the women, ominous throughout.

I would recommend these 3 works for enjoyable/interesting reading during lockdown. And look out for future publications by them!

July 15, 2021 2 comments

Novel Writing Writing

How I Created My Debut Novel

The Story of the Novel

Those in the know say Write about what you know. This could be my parents’ love story, with the boring bits left out.

My story takes place in a raw and natural setting called Karrana, where a stunningly attractive young woman is ready to break out of her universe and demand more from life. She’s clever and, like a bright chrysalis, just knows that she deserves more — like the cows know when it’s time to come home for milking. She meets the love of her life, or is it her polar opposite (?), at a victory dance. This novel takes place in an Australian country setting at the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. She falls pregnant in a moment of raw passion and rebellion. This throws her back into the very environment she is trying to break free from. This is a women’s story, so it’s about love, nature, pregnancies, child nurturing and dissatisfaction. And for those men who would understand and appreciate these themes. An accident to her first ‘golden child’ sends the young woman into a spin — a bit like a depression — followed by something akin to enlightenment, wherein passion leads her into a forbidden liaison with a sophisticated, refugee doctor in Sydney.

I won’t tell you the ending, but suffice it to say that it’s a bit complicated.

How I Wrote the First Draft

I wrote it chapter by chapter over a period of 18 months in 2013 – 2014, meeting in a group of four every fortnight, Randwick Writers, convened by Dina Davis. My first mistake was to engage an editor to do a structural edit when I had written the first draft. It was not ready to be assessed at this stage. After this, I put the manuscript away for some time and concentrated on blogging. I was also attending a larger writers’ group, and focusing on memoir writing. Later on, I worked some more on the story, while attending the Waverley Writers at the local library.

The Question of Structure

I had discovered that one of the hardest things about writing a novel is accessing knowledge and skills to do with structuring a longer work. That is, with the overall storytelling aspect. It begs the question of how to hold the whole novel in your sights, in order to appreciate or critique the structure and add significant bits and sacrifice others that might be scaffolding or padding.

Writers’ groups, unless there are novelists within who are aware of textuality, cannot usually help you with this aspect. Participants often focus on the smaller aspects to do with punctuation, words and grammar, all at the level of the sentence or the chapter.

It’s even harder to remember previous scenes or chapters of your colleagues’ novel manuscripts in a group. And, if you are writing a modern work, you need to consider recent changes that have taken place in this art form.

The Bigger Picture

I thought for a long while that it’s all about understanding Voice, Viewpoint, Point of View, Scenes and other issues, such as pace and narrative arc. And about writing a segment or a chapter from go to woe, that is, from the beginning to the end. But, after getting a grasp on such elements, and finishing the first draft, I was still searching for that elusive missing link, that was how to discover the overarching theme or rationale? for the novel I was writing. This became my next quest.

A Manuscript Assessment

A talented manuscript assessor at Writing New South Wales, requested, for a moderate sum, a couple of chapters of my manuscript, together with a synopsis, and then offered an hour-long Q&A session, where we worked together, asking and answering questions. That was what got me over the hump towards completion. After that, I knew where I was coming from and where I was headed. This was important for structural cohesion of the whole work; it enabled a final culling—and/or perfecting—of relevant motifs and metaphors. Within a relatively short period of time, I felt ready to publish the novel, so that it all hangs together. The missing link for myself, was knowing the right questions in relation to overall novelistic structure, to discover the ‘meaning’ of the work. After all, the novel is about many things, but this needs to be distilled into one or two sentences. Of course, if you plan the novel beforehand, you may not need this process, but there will be other different issues to confront.

Creating a Logline

I came across Jeff Lyons through Reedsy. Jeff is an expert in the art of storytelling. He states that you need a ‘logline’, which is a summary or premise, in one or two sentences, even before you start to write your novel. Of course, most people, and I am one of them, don’t work in this way. However, I have found that it is important to be able to do this, at some stage during the creative process. According to Lyons, the logline should include 7 parts: (i) a mention of the World of the novel (ii) the main Protagonist (iii) the Problem faced (iv) the Goal or Challenge for the protagonist (v) the personalised Opponent (vi) Choices or Decisions (vii) the Action taken by the protagonist.

The Logline or Premise of Karrana

In post-World War Two Australia, Bridie, a spirited young woman brought up on a dairy farm, surrounded by beauty and rawness, seeks romance and ultimate fulfilment. She hopes her choice of a mate, who she meets at the Karrana Victory Dance, will lead to a different future than that her mother, and, later on, her husband, want to keep her cosseted in. Her passionate nature, aided by fateful irony, deems that she demands more from life than nature alone; a family accident takes a hand in ensuring this.

July 4, 2020 0 comment

Novel Writing

The Sea Voyage: a metaphor

How to Write a Novel

After gaining a Teaching Certificate in 1965, I embarked on a journey from Australia to England, passing along the Suez Canal shortly before its forced closure by Egypt. My eventual goal was France, following in the footsteps of my older brother, William. I’d saved up my return fare for a berth on the P&O liner S.S. Oriana, a sparkling white vessel known as “the Queen of the Sea”. It was waiting for me to board it at Circular Quay in Sydney on the evening of 31st December, 1965. Along with three other teaching friends, I’d be arriving in Southampton on 24th January, 1966. This marked the beginning of my obsession with writing as I began to document, in a travel journal, my experiences during four years abroad. What I was to discover was that voyaging overseas was a great metaphor for the creative writing life. There were pitfalls for the traveller, like the dangerous rocks, winds and sirens that threatened Odysseus during his earlier travels; as well as great joys, during and at the end of the journey. Much would be experienced and learnt that no one could have taught me.

It’s the same with writing. You might have to experience its joys and downfalls before you figure out properly how to do it yourself. This applies particularly to writing a longer work, such as a novel or a modern memoir. Having been taught by several successful novelists for my postgraduate diploma and Master degree, and having read many “how to” books, I have come to realise certain things. Mainly, that finding a pathway towards publication is a minefield, and takes a great deal of perseverance and a good dose of luck on the part of a beginning author. And that even published writers may not be the most qualified persons to give advice about the craft of novel writing. Like the advice of one well-known author who told me to just “get it down” in segments, and then arrange cards in order to find a plotline and a story. This approach—called by some “pantsering“—may help; it did not help me. One thing that this excellent writer forgot to mention was that he had had mentors—editors and others—to assist in the structuring of a final work when he was writing during earlier decades.

Even Ernest Hemingway, who seems to have been “a natural”, had women and other writers, fawning over him, only too happy to assist him, if not with craft ideas, at least with confidence boosting and secretarial work.

January 13, 2019 0 comment