Writing Courses from Janice Marriott
When you need a bit of stimulation for your creativity …
What could be better than a trip to the REAL, GENUINE T Rex!
It was nice for me to realise that real is still meaningful. It still has impact. It has gravitas. It is what you go to a museum for. You never want to see replicas there. The boys were impressed, and they are at the age when so little impresses them, other than Top Gun perhaps.
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Congratulations
GWN client Shelley Burne-Field is a finalist in the Commonwealth Short Story competition. Fingers crossed!
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The 2022 Festival of Flash
is a streamed online day of celebration winding up with announcements of the winners of this year’s competitions. If you want to learn how to write Flash Fiction mark this day in your diary. Sunday, 19 June. You don’t need to go out into the horrible weather. It is all online. There are lots of panel discussions with some impressive writers taking part. (Some, I notice, used to be GWN clients. )
For more info go to the Flash Frontier YouTube channel.
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Mix and Mingle Courses and Modules
I’ve had a lot of response about this from last month so I’ll try, this time, to not be vague. If you have completed a GWN course but still want to explore more modules, in any of the three streams, children’s writing, poetry or memoir, please check the website and find the descriptions of all the modules in the Course Information leaflets. Choose whichever ones you want to do and contact me so we can together devise a module or several or many modules that you would like to do.
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Becoming a Writer
A client told me she now feels like a writer and has given herself a new email address, – her name and author@gmail.com.
“I’ve created a new email address so that I can keep correspondence separate. I’m also in the process of gathering enough courage to launch a Facebook page. I think perhaps the most significant part of this success is that I am starting to feel like I’m a ‘real’ writer now.”
This poet’s success was finding sponsorship for her first book of poems. Great!
It got me thinking about practical steps you can take to ‘become” a writer.
- If you are writing for children join Storylines. www.storylines.org.nz
Apart from all the obvious benefits like deadlines for events and competitions and awards, and notification
of interesting lectures &c there are three outstanding benefits:
Access to author and illustrator videos
Acces to Top Ten Tips by authors and illustrators
Access to NZ publishers’ and agents’ wish lists for submissions.
Take another step forward by enrolling for the July hui in Auckland.
Subscription to Storylines is $40. - A social media presence is essential now in order to convince a publisher your books will sell.
Make yourself a Facebook page, or go to website builders like WordPress or FreeParking and hire them to
make a website for you. Make sure you connect, ‘like’ other people’s sites too. Social media is all about
back scratching, if you know what I mean. - Join the Society of Authors.
- Apply for a mentorship.
- Buy a new journal and write something, anything, even a shopping list, or the names of all your
workmates or family, in it every day. - Find a local writer’s group to join.
- When someone asks you: “What do you do?” reply, “I’m a writer.” Four syllables. So easy.
(Maybe practise in the mirror first.)
The shortlist for the 2022 Book Awards for Children and YA is out.
Picture Book Finalists
Bumblebee Grumblebee, David Elliot (Gecko Press)
Lion Guards the Cake, Ruth Paul (Scholastic New Zealand)
My Cat Can See Ghosts, Emily Joe (Beatnik)
The Eight Gifts of Te Wheke, Steph Matuku, illustrated by Laya Mutton-Rogers (Huia Publishers)
The Greatest Haka Festival on Earth, Pania Tahau-Hodges, illustrated by Story Hemi-Morehouse (Huia
Publishers)
Junior Fiction Finalists
Amorangi and Millie’s Trip Through Time, Lauren Keenan (Huia Publishers)
Spark Hunter, Sonya Wilson (The Cuba Press)The Memory Thief, Leonie Agnew (Penguin Random House
NZ)
The Tomo, Mary-anne Scott (OneTree House)
The Uprising – The Mapmakers in Cruxcia, Eirlys Hunter illustrated by Kirsten Slade (Gecko Press)
Young Adult Fiction Award Finalists
Coastwatcher, David Hill (Penguin Random House NZ)
Displaced, Cristina Sanders (Walker Books Australia)
Katipo Joe: Wolf’s Lair, Brian Falkner (Scholastic New Zealand)
Learning to Love Blue, Saradha Koirala (Record Press)
Violet Black, Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House NZ)
Non-Fiction Finalists
Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes, Gavin Bishop (Penguin Random House NZ)
Draw Some Awesome, Donovan Bixley (Upstart Press)
Why is That Spider Dancing? Simon Pollard and Phil Sirvid (Te Papa Press)
How Do I Feel? A Dictionary of Emotions for Children, Rebekah Lipp, illustrated by Craig Phillips
(Wildling Books)
Kia Kaha: A Storybook of Māori Who Changed the World, Stacey Morrison & Jeremy Sherlock (Penguin
Random House NZ)
NZSA Best First Book Award Finalists
Hine and the Tohunga Portal, Ataria Sharman (Huia Publishers)
I am Autistic, Chanelle Moriah (Allen & Unwin)
Mokopuna Matatini, Pania Tahau-Hodges illustrated by Story Hemi-Morehouse (Huia Publishers)
My Cat Can See Ghosts Emily Joe (Beatnik)
Spark Hunter, Sonya Wilson (The Cuba Press)
The winners will be announced on 10 August.
Educational Publishers
Thee is now a website exclusively for and about educational publishers.
https://nzeducationalpublishers.org
This is the best way to keep up to date with what is a very changeable collection of publishers who all have different requirements.
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Publishing submissions
Check out Allen & Unwin, and their ‘Friday Pitch’ submission guidelines for children’s/YA fiction
and non-fiction. They don’t accept picture books or short stories.
And
“Walker Wednesday” submission day is June 29, 2022. [check]
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Editing
Re-writing, the endless editing of stories, is often dull. You long for that rush of undisturbed writing. There is nothing like that rush of words, that quick flow of a story idea. It is great. Don’t leave that behind. Don’t concentrate too much on the crafting and lose the inspiration! Some people learn to write by writing lots and lots of unfettered writing. Maybe that would suit you best too. But remember: when it comes to getting it published, you will have to do the editing and the grooming and the shaping.
Writing can be like riding a runaway train. One thing that might help is this: Before you write your final paragraph, refer back to your T shirt diagram or (if you don’t do this) write down the theme of your story. What is your story about, in just a few words? When you have done this write that last paragraph in such a way as to bring the story back to that main theme. This often gives a story the feeling of completeness. It is the big difference between a story that is about something, and hence worth telling, and a story that just drifts on.
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Hell’s Reading Challenge
If you are a teacher you will be interested in the success of this
scheme:
“This live reading series takes classes and libraries into the worlds of the authors, who read from their books and answer questions from curious students. Over 1400 children tuned in to watch Tania
Roxborogh read the first two chapters of Charlie Tangaroa and the Creature from the Sea – a book that saw her win the Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction and the Margaret Mahy Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2021.
Tania also answered questions from the students about the inspiration behind her writing and how she creates her characters. She says the idea for Charlie Tangaroa came to her while teaching.
“When I’m teaching students how to write, I encourage them to be curious. One day, I wrote a question on the board, “What would you do if you found a mermaid on the beach” and suddenly I heard a voice in my imagination say, ‘poke it in the eye with a stick” (which happens in the book), and just like that I had another character to add to my waiting room,” she says
The next live author reading is in June with Kate Parker, author of Kowhai and the Giants, which won the 2021 Best Picture Book and Best First Book categories at the NZ Book Awards.
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How to Get Published
This is an excerpt from an article by bookseller Louise Ward in a Society of Authors newsletter recently:
“The question is then, how do we get Kiwi fiction into the hands of Kiwi readers (and beyond, for preference – the market’s not big enough here for many to give up their day jobs)?
It starts with the author. It’s their book. Are they backing it? Are they prepared to talk about it in an engaging and lively manner, capturing the ear and eye of a reader? Are they entering fully into the publicity, making connections with bookshops, book clubs, getting the word out on social, print and radio media? If this is anathema to them, that’s fair enough – some of us are introverts, I know. But this is a big part of getting people to read books these days. No matter how you feel about it, the cult of personality wins and if you can market your book well, you’re on to a winner.
Current top influences on readers coming in to my independent bookshop: Nine to Noon, The Listener, Tik Tok and word of mouth amongst friendship groups.”
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Vocabulary
I had the difficult job this week of explaining to a spelling-averse child that there are three ways to spell rain:
Rain
Rein
Reign
He just said: “Why?” Any answers to this will be gratefully passed on to him.
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Don’t be afraid of editors, and
publishers. They are people too.
Tenses
A client explained her confusion over present and past tense so I went through a text like this:
“At school the children drew a mountain, a river, a house and a family. Then the teacher said,” -That is the beginning of your story. It is all in the past tense. The verbs are: drew, and said. This means you
are writing in the past tense. This is the normal, traditional way to tell a story. You need to make sure all the
other narrative verbs are also in the past tense.
– “Children! We all have a different story. What’s yours?” ”This is where the confusion is. You have direct speech in the story as well as narration. Fine. Direct speech
is usually in the present tense.
e.g. I might write: Today was very hot. The teacher said, “open the window.”
Was and said are the verbs here, in the past tense.
Open is in the present tense.
You would never say “Please opened the window.
Have is the verb. It is in the present because it is what the teacher says.
It is in the past tense. Yes, it IS confusing. A good way of getting used to it is to tell a story. Don’t write it
down. Tell it to someone.You will then se how direct speech is in the present tense and narrations usually in
the past.
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End note
An anecdote about my recent Sprinkles experiences:
Thee was a shortage of Sprinkles in Auckland. Supply chain issues, they said. Oh no!I had to find loads of them because Grandson Tane wanted to make his mother a birthday present where the icing was almost entirely composed of Sprinkles.
I went to there supermarkets. None. After two dairies I finally found one that had some old tubes of Sprinkles. We coated the cake in butter icing. Oh, the
mess caused by super sticky fingers! Then we poured sprinkles into our cupped hands and smacked the sprinkles onto it (That is what the recipe said to do! Recipe is in the NZ Birthday Cake Cookbook.) We were both covered in Sprinkles, even in the corners of our eyes Cake was a huge success.
When I returned to my kitchen to clean the walls, benches, cupboards, fridge front, floor I discovered the grouting gaps between the floor tiles were filled with Sprinkles! The Dyson ended up full of Sprinkles, quite pretty really. Many of the sprinkles are still there.
A few days laterI received a script from a client which was all about the imaginary little people who colour the Sprinkles in a Sprinkles factory. Was that coincidence?
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janice@gowritenow.nz
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