Writing Courses from Janice Marriott
The signs are good for “emerging” writers
Yes, I know it’s a hideous adjective. It makes me think of something sleepy emerging from hibernation covered in dead leaves but you could think of it as transforming into a butterfly…
Example One
The Michel King Writers’ Centre is encouraging ‘emerging’ writers to apply this time.
They say: “A continuing trend is the high number of applicants in the emerging writers category.
There is clearly a large and growing demand for developing writers to have an opportunity to retreat and work on their craft. This underpins our kaupapa of supporting grassroots growth in the literary sector.”
Visit their website if you are interested in a short stay in a beautiful house surrounded by trees on the slopes of Mount Victoria in Devonport.
Example Two
Allen & Unwin‘s editor Melanie Laville-Moore has just announced the company is looking for an as yet unpublished manuscript of a novel. The deadline is February/March. The word length is around 100,000. They are looking for a best seller, a novel that everyone will find unputdownable. The reward for the author selected: An advance of $10,000. That is very generous. So if you have a potential bestselling novel in a cupboard or under the bed – dust it off and re-read it. Work on it. Improve it. Then send it in. For more details see their website.
Example Three
Applications for the 2022 programme of the The NZ Society of Authors Mentor programme are accepted from 1 December 2021 to 1 February 2022. If you are a member of NZSA this is always an opportunity to get experienced advice.
Don’t expect your writing to be perfect.
Just write with confidence, and a smile on
your face.
For the poets
A perfect Christmas present either for or from you would be:
More Than a Roof.
It’s a great brand now N Z poetry collection about houses and
homes and contains a poem from Kate Saunders , Page 81, who
is doing the GWN Poetry course, and one from me.
Poem of the Month
It Gave Me the Daring
By Laila, a Kashmiri mystic.
I didn’t trust it for a moment,
But I drank it anyway,
The wine of my own poetry.
It gave me the daring to take hold
Of the darkness and tear it down
And cut it into little pieces.
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Talking about Christmas
You could donate to Kiwi Christmas Books.
“We collect books all over the country (shout out to Southland and Hamilton where huge donations were made last year) and deliver them to city missions, refuges and Family Works organisations which distribute the books to families.” So says Sonya Wilson who organises this wonderful group. She also says: “Buy books this Christmas – buy them for all the kids you know, and all the kids you don’t.”
Find participating bookshops on www.kiwichristmasbooks.org.nz.
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Change of Name
It always seems annoying when institutions change their names but do take note of this one.
The NZ Book Council is now called Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Its website is crammed with useful information about local authors, publishers, and readers.
For Writers who Write for Children
2022 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
It is time to make sure your publishers don’t forget to enter your books for consideration in these awards. It’s complicated.
Titles with release dates between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 will be considered for the 2022 awards. There are two submission dates. Submissions are now open for books published between 1
April 2021 and 30 November 2021, and will close at 5pm on Tuesday 14 December 2021. For books published between 1 December 2021 and 31 March 2022, submissions open on 15 December and will close at 5pm on Friday 11 February 2022. A call for Entries pack with eligibility criteria and other information is available at http://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards-forchildren-and-young-adults/how-to-enter/.
For any extra information go to the Awards Administrator
at childrensawards@nzbookawards.org.nz
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Educational Publishing
Some people make a success of this type of writing. There’s a GWN module devoted to writing
literacy texts for educational publications – Module 9.
By pure coincidence I was reading The Sapling online and came across an important and inspiring article about Andre Ngapo who has made a successful career out of writing these texts.
He is, as he says, “world famous in the Journal room.”
The article caught my eye because it is written by Kura Rutherford, a client of Go Write Now.
To find The Sapling go to https://www.thesapling.co.nz. It’s always full of interesting articles
Storylines’ List of Notable Books I 2021 s now available on their website, storylines.org.nz
It is always useful to look at these lists to see what publishers are publishing.
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Eirlys Hunter has a great article about picture books in the latest Spinoff
A small quote from it…”As well as rhythm (and rhyme if it’s perfect), and fun with language, there’s another, more elusive quality that many of my favourite picture books share, and that’s an element of mystery. Children’s writers should have a notice saying Not everything needs to be explained pinned above their desks. There’s no explanation for the tiger who rang Sophie’s doorbell, or the elephant that went rumpeta rumpeta all down the road, or the private boat that carried Max to the Wild Things.”
(Eirlys ’s The Mapmakers’ Race, is a 2018 junior fiction novel about a motley crew of brothers and sisters adventuring over a mountain range.)
The importance of humour
Sally Sutton is one of our most popular writers of picture books. Her tip about humour is worth
thinking about and acting on:
“Be funny A writer’s first job is to entertain. I would suggest putting aside those loftier aims of educating readers and teaching them empathy, and get on with making them laugh! Humour is the best tool in the world to keep readers reading. And the secret is, once they’re reading (and laughing), they’re being educated and learning empathy without even knowing it. So: be funny, and consider being naughty. I’m not talking about poo jokes here; ‘good kids’ love reading about ‘naughty kids’.”
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Facebook Flaneur
Picture Book Weekly
This is a new Facebook site where people share their favourite books. It’s genuine, not sales oriented, another great place to go to find inspiration for Christmas presents.
New Zealnd Made Books is a public group with 2k members that invites discussions and chances to publicise or review books
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I leave you with this observation:
It isn’t just books, academic essays, and articles that need editing. It can even be a tradie’s van.
Afterthought
Here’s a photo sent to be by a friend that seems to me to serve as a model for how a writer could celebrate – the publication of a book?
Christmas?
Orange or green traffic lights?
New Year Resolutions that will recharge your batteries?
You choose.
For me – I’m celebrating the fact I have moved and managed to transplant, literally, nearly all of my cuttings and plants from my old house to this apartment. I have always had a garden filled with sweet peas, a very smelly and tough strain I grow from its seeds each year, but it wasn’t the season for the plants to have set seeds when I moved in October. However, out of one of the pots I brought with me sprang two sweet pea plants! And now they have flowers and I will have seeds.
Somehow this miracle gives me great pleasure.
To all of you – have a happy holiday season and fingers crossed that 2022 is a year that brings you all you could wish for
Tutor
Writer
Columnist
Script Assessor
www.gowritenow.nz
janice@gowritenow.nz
www.janicemarriott.com
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