speaking is easy - online at AWM

The Online Writing Festival on Monday at the brand spanking new Australian Writer's Marketplace Online was host to several very welcome presenters and a good time seemed to be had by all. Online literary agent Miss Snark was complimentary towards her inquisitive audience, noting there were 'very few nitwits'. How 'kind of you, KIInd of you' to let me come, one might have said.

Viking and Firebird children's editor Sharyn November was taken with Penni Russon's suggestion that gamers were reading their own complex highly rendered 'choose your own adventure' books when playing online, and noted that as the writers and publishers of the future would probably come from this generation, it was worth recognising that some genre writers were gamers as teens, and that 'some still are'.  She also mentioned a rise in interest in Australian YA authors in the US, and that there was a  gap in the 8-12 market there.

John Marsden was mobbed by questioners after technical hitches were overcome - to my question about online writing festivals compared to the face to face variety, one of which he hosts himself at his property, Tye Estate, he answered whimsically that 'writing is so solitary, that these forums can make a big difference to writers' emotional health. And writers all have emotional health issues, don't we?'

He listed the highlights of his career as opening his school, Candlebark, getting the first book published and winning the Lloyd O'Neil award, and said that 10 percent of fiction writers in Australia 'make a great living, 10% do OK, and the rest struggle. They're not good odds.' (And by the way, his new website is here, and it is a thing of some beauty.)

Although first-time novelist and bidding war survivor Kate Morton (The Shifting Fog) is a great believer in plotting, she also believes that  'if you give your unconscious mind a problem to work on, it manages to untangle it very nicely most of the time...'

I was amazed to learn she is juggling a PhD in gothic fiction with her second novel, The Authoress, and very pleased to hear that she was able to let all considerations of 'the market' disappear once her story emerged and began to sweep her away:

For the first half of the book it was very difficult. Thoughts swam around inside my head interrupting me whenever I was writing: 'Is it like the first book? Is it different? Is it worse? Will the publishers think they made a mistake? Have they made a mistake!?!'...
But thankfully once the story kicks in and takes over, you can kill those voices. I just keep writing what I love and what I know. Trying to second guess a market is akin to a publishing death wish, I think.

This amiable writer was happy to give advice to participants, even suggesting a tutor for one, and shares with Matthew Reilly a deep commitment to plotting.

Reilly is famous for self-publishing the first of a stream of thrillers, Contest, and hawking it around bookstores himself. One of his novels, Ice Station, is being made into a film, and his books have been sold into 15 countries. He had some telling remarks to make about marketing, saying that 'it's terribly important these days':

As the author of a book, you are the chief spokesperson for that book. Readers want to see the author, hear the author, hear from the author. This can be tough for some authors, since by definition, to be an author, you might be shy, or solitary by nature. But in a multi-media world, you gotta do it!

I was intrigued to hear that he considered blogs to have some clout:

I tried some of that (online marketing) for the internet release of HOVER CAR RACER, and found it only okay. It's very hard to quantify. But I think blogs are getting bigger and bigger. I did a signing in NZ recently and one person who came said he found out about it from a blog.

and believes in covers:

And anyone who tells you "Don't judge a book by its cover" has never tried to sell a book! Covers make a huge difference. They are where I am the most demanding with my publishers.

The online forum is an interesting medium  and tells you more about participants than you might think - Reilly turned up early, and also did a lovely job formatting his replies so participants could find their answers, using upper case headings! what a guy, e.g. ONLINE MARKETING, MY KNOCKBACK, TARYN'S Q: CLIMBING OUT OF OBSCURITY ( and finally, in lower case, My God, have I answered all the questions...)

To a question on using writing textbooks, he answered:

I must confess, I didn't read any such books.

I find the best school for writing novels is reading novels. I read every thriller I could find: Clancy, Crichton, Archer, Thomas Harris, Robert Harris. And because I knew the genre so well, I could then break all the rules.

He said that Random House sent him a photocopied rejection letter for Contest ( his early novel, predating the self-published Ice Station) 'with a photocopied signature!' When pushed to name the best and worst aspects of success Reilly said that his experience had been overwhelmingly positive, but the literary v. popular thing annoyed him a bit, particularly with newspapers.

Interviews with Darren Nash, editorial director at Orbit and Atom, and Kate Forsyth, fantasy writer (The Witches of Eileanan and nearly twenty other titles) are published in full at the Speakeasy (where there are also short reports on other forum sessions.)

And just to think about, for another day - Matthew Reilly again, with his uppercase heading, on what makes a novel literary:

THERESA'S Q: WHAT MAKES A NOVEL "LITERARY"

Oh my, where to begin....!

You know, short answer: the marketing plays a huge part, perhaps more than anything in the research or writing. If the publishers tells you it's literary and sends it for review at all the literary papers, and submits it for the usual awards, usually such a book will acquire the label "literary". Even the cover makes a contribution: grim browns, cursive titling...equals literary. Silver foil equals mass-market.

My basic distinction: you can enjoy a book in two ways -- one, when the author does all the work for you and sweeps you along, telling you a story (my kind of book); or two, where the prose is designed to challenge you, and make you ponder sentence-structure, word-use and word-choice (the "literary" book).
Perhaps we should categorise books as "challenging" and "author-driven".

(He also gave some very good general advice, which is also over at Speakeasy.)

So that's a wrap from me, and congrats to the team at AWM for a very smooth and enjoyable operation.

Comments

[Ron]

Thanks for the heads-up on the AWPO. It's the first I've heard of it.

[genevieve]

It's brand spanking new, Ron - opened just about two weeks ago, a little late but there nonetheless. I got a flyer from the Vic Writers' Centre in October, and got invited to have a look at the site, and visit the festival, by AWM.

They have discounted memberships for members of other writers' centres, so it might be worth a look unless you prefer to buy the print version of Australian Writers' Marketplace. I should review the website and compare the two sometime, I guess.

I was invited to join in the festival for free, but I decided to subscribe to AWMOnline anyway as I would be updating my print copy at some point.

[Ron]

I used to buy the print version of Australian Writers' Marketplace but stopped doing so because I thought it was a waste of paper (for me) as the amount of info I wanted from it was so small.

An online version makes so much more sense and should be able to be kept more up-to-date.