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Sunday, November 30th, 2008
No one is surprised that few short stories or novels will be ready to go right from first draft. One way writers can help improve their work is to put it in front of a writing group for feedback. As well as offering critiques, writing groups can help with networking, market tips and plain old-fashioned friendship.
Brisbane has the best open speculative fiction writing group in Australia. It’s called Vision and has helped nurture writers such as Trent Jamieson, Marianne de Pierres, Grace Dugan, Dirk Flinthart, Jason Nahrung, Cory Daniels and others.
I learnt a lot from Vision and wanted to share some of my thoughts about what makes a good writing group. First off, the car thing. Writing groups are like cars for a number of reasons:
So, how do you choose a good writing group? Let’s be honest though – working out whether a writing group is the right one for you comes mostly down to gut. But here are three simple rules that may help you work things out faster.
Rule one: If others don’t take their writing seriously they probably won’t take your writing seriously either. The single best way to ascertain how serious others are about their writing is to ask a few simple questions:
If the answer to all of those questions is ‘none’ you may want to reconsider participation in that group. Having people who don’t treat their writing as a ‘hobby that they’ll get around to some time’ is even more important than having people writing in the same genre as you.
Rule two: The only thing that sport and critique groups should have in common is that they should both be governed by a set of rules.
A writing group should operate in a civilized and consistent manner. It should give all members a good opportunity to participate and it should have checks and balances that stop one person dominating.
Rule three: When the critique group outgrows its usefulness to you, move on.
Humans are social creatures and belonging to a tribe is important. It’s even more vital for writers who spend much of their time tapping away in solitude. So, if the time comes that you’re not getting much from the core work of the group, maybe it’s time to move on. When it’s time to move on, move on. Just think about how you can pay it forward.
They are some of my quick thoughts. Anyone else have any suggestions or experiences – good or bad?
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
Author Sean Williams has a great little post on his blog packed with info about the financial life of authors.
Williams has handy pie charts on his expenses, income source and income breakdown which give great examples of the business side of being a fulltime writer that you don’t hear enough about. He’s also got a graph showing fluctiuations in writing income over two decades.
Check it out.
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
The Vatican appears to have forgiven The Beatles – and specifically John Lennon – for his comment 42 years ago that the band was “more popular than Jesus.”
The latest edition of L’Osservatore Romano praises the band’s White Album and puts Lennon’s comment down to the boasting of a working class English kid dealing with a rapid rise to fame. The official Vatican newspaper then goes on to praise The Beatles’ music and continuing pop influence.
There’s some talk that the Vatican’s engagement with popular culture issues like this is an effort to shake off a stuffy image but I think this change of heart has more to do with the fact they can safely forgive Lennon knowing that Google has proven him wrong.
Just look at the number of hits on Google when you do the relevant searches:
The Lennon case doesn’t hold up. The Google Standard clearly shows Jesus is more popular than The Beatles.
But the band can take some solace. The Beatles are roughly twice as popular as the Pope who only pulls in 37.8 million hits.
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
In February 1962 John Glenn became the the first US astronaut to go into orbit. His Mercury 6 capsule is on display in the National Air and Space Museum and this photo I took of it is my current favourite from my whole trip.
I like that even behind the perspex designed to protect the capsule you can see the designer’s clear priorities based on the jolly big ABORT button within easy reach.
The capsule Yuri Gagarin had used the year before to become the first human in space was designed to have him eject following re-entry and parachute his way back to Earth. A handy design feature that doubled as a built in abort button. Smart but kinda takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Amateur photography is one area of the digital revolution that didn’t suffer the same take-no-prisoners approach of the big media companies towards music and video. And we’re all better off for it. On our three week overseas trip we took a total of 951 photographs. Pre-digital, we would have been talking about having to purchse and then pay to develop 40 rolls of 24-photo film.
One of the joys of digital photography is that it allows for opportunistic photos like these:
Kate took the photo of this kid who was on the six hour flight from Washington to San Francisco with the rest of his family. He couldn’t have been more than two-and-a-half. His mum had gotten up to go to the bathroom and left him watching his portable DVD player. Funny thing was every now and then the kid would tap the thing like it was a keyboard.
And the morning after I took a photo of this:
We stopped in for breakfast at this great little diner and the whole time we were there this old guy was using his iPhone. And he was a pro – resizing websites on the fly with the pinch technique and tapping away at e-mails.
But it all got me thinking about how different things would have been 10 years ago. While some people might have had a digital camera, I didn’t. And there weren’t any portable DVD players or iPhones around to take cute pictures of. But even if they were – if I was using a camera where I’d paid $4 for film and another chunk of change to develop I may not have taken either .
But because I have a digital camera and there are plenty of portable DVD players and iPods around I could take a picture of them without concern I was “wasting” film, copy them to my laptop and blog about it all.
Ain’t technology grand.
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
Today, the second part of my analysis of the Obama win.
Age and race as indicators of change
Americans were in the mood for change. Obama’s age and race provided an immediately obvious difference to crystallize on, even before people started comparing policies. He was a generation removed from Bush, from McCain and from the Clintons.
Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, and 40 years after Ali was stripped of the world heavyweight title for refusing to go to Vietnam an African-American was elected president of the United States. The symbolism was magnificent.
But while African-American turnout was good, it was also strong across most demographics. People wanted to vote. His race or age weren’t responsible for him being elected but they were both a lightning rod for the change that had happened in America and the change he was proposing. They helped people focus.
The Palin Gambit and other McCain errors
The choice of Sarah Palin was illustrative of a number of serious tactical errors the McCain camp made during the campaign. Denied his supposed first choice of independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman, McCain chose the Alaskan governor to appeal to the Republican base and Democratic women put off by the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primaries. But the two-for-one Palin deal only delivered on half of the bargain and it wasn’t the half they needed. Somewhere along the way the Republicans forgot that the Democratic women who were supporting Clinton so strongly were a generation older than Palin. The fact she was a woman didn’t matter – she was too young to have fought the battles their generation had fought. They didn’t like her politics and weren’t going to do her any favours.
The Palin gambit also meant McCain gave up one of his best tactical advantages over Obama – the experience card. No longer could McCain level the argument that Obama lacked experience because his choice for Vice President was clearly even worse. It was one of the worst own-goals in recent political history.
For large parts of the campaign it seemed like McCain just couldn’t catch a break., McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign amid the growing economic crisis wasn’t entirely flawed. But to pay off it needed his party to at least pretend to look to him as a leader and not vote the original stimulus package (whatever you think of it) down and blame Nancy Pelosi for being too nasty.
His decision to go so negative so soon was another flaw. McCain should have spent the last three weeks of the campaign telling American families why he thought Obama’s tax plan would be bad for them. But no, instead he mixed his messages with hyped-up negatives that only appealed to his base.
Friday, November 14th, 2008
As promised, my amateur assessment of the reasons behind the Obama victory.
A clear and consistent message
US presidential elections are about creating a narrative – who your candidate is and what they’ll do for the country if you vote for them. The simplicity and consistency of the Obama message was one of the best performances in modern politics. What did Obama believe in? Change and Hope. It was a message he’d started refining in his magnificent speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. It’s a great speech and a clear reminder of how powerful a tool speech-writing and oratory can be.
The McCain narrative was all about his past – his long service to the US in the military, his time in a prisoner of war camp, his seat at the table for many of the major political decisions of the last two decades. It was if they thought time was reversing and McCain was running to be president for 2008 to 2000.
Logistics
Politics mattered in this election. The politics of organisation, of fundraising, of securing volunteers mattered in this election.
The Howard Dean-driven strategy of competing in all states and in every possible county they could paid off big time. I read plenty of reports during the campaign that McCain offices would close early and remain shut on weekends because of a lack of volunteers while Obama offices would still be open until 7pm on weeknights and across the weekend. But more importantly, by refusing to give up on solidly Republican counties, the Democrats made their job easier in battleground states like Virginia and North Carolina. The Democrats could have easily decided to not establish offices or have volunteers in solidly Republican counties where the vote for Bush in 2004 had been in the order of 70% or 75%. But by setting up shop and working hard they managed to reduce the McCain vote in some of those areas to 55% or 60%. They mightn’t have won many of those types of places but that didn’t matter. The broad strategy meant narrowing
In this sense the prolonged primary race between Obama and Clinton helped the Democrats. Each time they went to a new state for a primary they attracted tens of thousands of new voters. The Democrats had access to all these extra names and addresses when the big show came to town. The Obama/Clinton contest had made the party stronger.
Obama’s decision to eschew public financing for his campaign was another political masterstroke. Although it probably delivered the death knell for public financing of’ presidential campaigns it had to be done. The Republican Party itself is still way ahead of the Democrats when it comes to fund raising. In this election the Republican Party raised $100 million more in political donations than their Democrat rivals. So the Obama camp made the strategic decision to ditch the guaranteed $85 million public finance limit and see how much they could raise on their own. This is entirely why Obama was able to outspend McCain three to one for the last month of the campaign.
Tomorrow: Age and Race as Indicators of Change, and The Palin Gambit and other McCain errors
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
The day after America elected its first African American president I decided to take a wander around Harlem. I took the above photo at the Apollo Theatre on West 125th St, where entertainers like James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight got their start.
The mood in Harlem was vibrant and enthusiastic. I talked to a few people and they were proud of the Obama (or “OB” as many referred to the president-elect) win. They were proud because they had voted for a candidate they wanted rather than just having to settle for a candidate who they thought was the lesser of two evils.
Stalls peppered the streets but there wasn’t much election paraphernalia on offer. Mostly it was just incense stall after incense stall but a few enterprising souls had t-shirts with a picture of Obama and a line saying “We did it”. My favourite was the t-shirt that said: “He’s my president. And he’s black.” (In the interests of full disclosure – I bought my Obama 08 hat yesterday).
I’m working on a post about the main reasons Obama won. I’ll hopefully have that up tonight or tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
During the campaign for the 1999 republic referendum in Australia I worked in a political office. When people called to argue the case against giving our country an Australian head of state I often asked them whether they had a young son or daughter, or grand-child. Or a young niece or nephew.
If they said yes, I asked them whether they wanted that young boy or girl to have a chance to be their country’s head of state. Obviously it was a question designed to get a “yes” in response. Well, I’d say to them, you realise under our constitutional monarchy that young child is forbidden from becoming head of state.
It rarely made much of a difference – then again people who bother to call a political office are rarely willing to have their mind changed.
But watching the result of the US election makes me feel the same way. If a minority candidate with a strange name and a Kenyan ancestry can become US president maybe there’s hope for my daughter – born well after the 1999 republic referendum was lost – can become Australia’s head of state.
Here’s hoping.
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
It’s over. Officially.
We spent the last four hours sitting in a dodgy New York bar with an Australian friend of ours watching results come in. While I was nervous for the first hour or so, I got increasingly excited as we saw the results in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.
McCain’s concession speech is gracious but uninspiring. The Obama speech may be different and I wonder whether he’ll focus again on th slogan he ran on: “Change we can believe in.” A great theme to centre a campaign on.
Now it’s time to deliver.
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