Yesterday I saw my first roller derby match. The rules of the game are pretty simple. Two teams of five players skate around a small circuit with one attacking “jammer” from each team trying to score points by lapping opposing defenders. It took me a while to follow the intricacies of the game but as I got a handle on it I started to realise the game had a lot to teach me about writing.

Go hard or go home

I expected the skaters to ease into the match; maybe take a few laps to warm up and find their wheels. No. As soon as the whistle blew the jammers were speeding ahead pushing their way past defenders from the opposing team and scoring points.

And so it should be with your writing. Doesn’t matter what you’re writing, if you wait to grab the reader’s attention, you’re gone. Get in there early and deploy whatever tools you have at your disposal to engage the reader. Early points on the board matter.

Fall down

Speed-skating around a circuit not much bigger than a tennis court with nine other people just waiting to bump into you, means you’re going to fall down. The roller-derby girls know this and practice falling onto their knee guards instead of their hands. They fall to their knees and slide for a little bit as they slow down. It’s kind of poetic after a while.

Safe writing is boring writing. Everyone knows safe writing when they see it. It’s the sort of stuff you see on the social pages of newspapers and in government reports. It might be competent and occasionally, might even border on engaging. But how much did the writer learn along the way? Think about the last time you stretched your writing muscles and aimed a bit too high or went a bit too fast. Even when you were shovelling up the crap left behind, didn’t it feel kinda good going fast then falling down?

Get up again and keep on skating

After sliding on their knee guards for a while the roller derby girls get back up and keep on skating. I even saw one jammer fall to her knees, slide for a bit then get back up and keep scoring points.

Once you’ve monumentally stuffed up a piece of your writing so badly even your cat refuses to have shredded bits of the manuscript in its litter box get back up again. Too often writing suffers from an author’s failure to stretch their skills or their refusal to keep on pushing the boundaries when they stuff up. Push your writing hard, fall down, learn, get up. Repeat.

It’s okay to have nice things

What I wasn’t expecting at the roller derby were the costumes, the almost compulsory fish-net stockings, the mad hair-cuts and the dance routines. The whole evening was full of spectacle. Whether it was Amber “Eva Brawl” Lee tearing up the track, girls in outrageously short shorts or team managers in bright yellow suits, there was no shortage of entertaining things to engage with.

Cultivate some spectacle in your writing. Make it sing for you. Know your writing style and don’t be afraid to show off some of its best elements.

Stay close to your audience

There were about 2500 people watching the two matches with me. The farthest was probably 30m from the circuit but the closest “suicide” seats were right beside the skaters. The skaters sped by lap after lap only metres from the spectators. And after the games finishes they mingled with the audience, chatting and posing for photos. During the game the announcer declared a nearby pub as the official after-game venue for any audience members who wanted to join in the after-derby drinking.

A writer’s job is to be read. More and more, writers need to engage directly with their audience to help achieve that. Whether it’s through blogs or social media writers need to develop a platform to market themselves and their writing and increase their chance of being read and being published. But you’ve got to love the people you’re hanging around with. Authenticity is key.

Top picture: Gomisan

News sites are reporting that the Jane Austen House Museum is so distressed by people leaving the ashes of loved ones in their garden, they’ve written to fans of the author asking them to stop.

Says the museum’s collections manager Louise West: “While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. On three or four occasions, our gardener Celia Simpson has found piles of human ash placed in the garden secretly.”

Wonder if anyone was cremated with a copy of Pride and Prejudice?

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:

• They’re very useful in modern publishing.
• They will help you get places faster
• You’ll pick up some friends along the way
• Just make sure you don’t choose a lemon

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:

• How many people have published something in the last six months?
• How many people have submitted something out in the last six weeks?
• How many people have started or finished something in the last six days?
• How many people have done any writing in the last six hours?

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.

• Critiquing isn’t a performance sport and it’s not debating
• It shouldn’t be about stroking one person’s ego
• Should be a clear set of rules about the critiquing process

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?

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.