How not to spend your Sunday

That was fun!

I’ve just spent the last 18 hours of my life learning more about malware removal than I ever wanted to know.

No, I’m not clueless.  We have a pretty good anti-virus set up, and I know what sort of pages and files to avoid, and yet this nasty – and difficult to remove - operator still managed to find a way in.

Alarmingly, it took a total of seven different processes/programs, several of which were lengthy and needed to be repeated in sequence a number of times, to finally flush out the offenders.  This consumed a large portion of what would otherwise have been productive writing time.

Take home messages for writers:

·       Keep your anti-nasties software and operating systems updated.

·       Back up your work to a remote location ** Make sure you do this even if you ignore everything else in this post **.

·       Get a good spyware tool to use alongside your regular virus checker.  Increasingly malware is using innocuous looking cookies as its way in.

·       Take action when your browser first starts running slowly (in hindsight, I should’ve investigated more carefully a couple of days ago when I noticed how clunky it was getting).

·       Remain calm and use the task manager to close the browser when an “attack” begins.  This can reduce the scale of file corruption.

·       Always have several punchy antivirus programs at your disposal.  Sometimes one just ain’t enough.

Fortunately, everyone else on the planet hates malware just as much I do, so there were some good how-to guides and free software available.  The only other things I needed were moral fortitude and a violet crumble.

It has been a warning to be more vigilant.  This time it was just an annoyance, but it has reminded me how close the threat of loss of data always lurks.

The secret ingredient in blogging

There is something that has been playing on my mind lately. Surprisingly(!), it's about blogging.

There are a lot of 'how-to' blog pointers out there. The vast majority of these are based on marketing fundamentals.  They are the same rules that govern the production of commercial copy: advertising.

Think of your market. Select a handful of key words with maximum appeal to this market. Keep it simple, short, sweet. Write always with your target in mind. Tweet. Throw in some controversy. Not enough to get yourself sued, but enough to create a storm of response through the blogosphere.  

This is not a bad thing, and no doubt it has raised the calibre of many commercially-driven blog enterprises. But I would like to speak also in defence of self-expression.

For every successful blog who has followed these - yes, copy-writing - rules, there are plenty of others who have just gone right ahead and done their own thaing and succeeded. 

Irish gumbo has been steadily serving up bowlfuls of his own special wistful and wry observations, unabated since 2008. (I love that blog. And I want the recipe). 

Last year, Lori at RRSAHM broke all the rules when she blogged her way blindly through the unthinkable implosion of her life. She is still pulling shards out of her wounds, and her blog allows her to slowly examine and arrange them into small patterns of meaning and moments of grace.  Something powerful is unfolding there that defies the laws of blogging. 

And in the same year the all-time most hilarious (and full of whimsy) story was told in all its passive aggressive glory by The Bloggess, who was just as surprised as Victor when success rang the doorbell. 

So what's the secret ingredient?

Each of these blogs demonstrates that there is something other than a set of formulaic rules behind good writing.  They are each imbued (or in the case of The Bloggess, saturated) with the personality of the writers themselves.

How do I get it?

Learn from the successful.  But also know that success is not the product of a formula. It requires something unique and intangible that only you can provide. Write what you mean to. Be genuine. Keep it real. Put a piece of yourself into it. You - and only you - are your writing's secret ingredient. Learn to savour your own unique style by having fun with it, and then arrange everything else to bring that special intensity to the fore. 

That is the place where your writing will succeed.

On being judged

This blog about writing has, it seems, veered more into writing about blogging.  

This is the result of the juxtaposition of the blogging workshop I attended earlier this week, and the Best Australian Blogs Competition 2012, in which DD is a nominee in the words and writing category.  So let's just call April blogging month, and trust that when the excitement dies down, Destination: denouement will resume a more writerly tone. 

In the meantime, I’ve been glued to my site analytics, trying to divine whether our distinguished competition judge(s) have passed through, but I am no wiser.  So, if you are reading this and you’re a judge, welcome!  Take a seat, make yourself comfortable.  Please take a moment to enjoy the Denouement ambiance.  Would you like a cup of tea? 

Old woman pouring tea, unknown artist...
by Black Country Museums @ Flickr

It is a strange feeling to know that your personal work is being assessed, critiqued, scored.  But as writers, this is an essential part of our métier.  Eventually someone will be reading what we have written, and deciding if it’s good or not.  Feedback is an important tool to improve our writing, and there are a number of ways to get it. 

Probably the least useful is to launch your untested work directly at its intended publisher in the hope of an encouraging reply.  Asking your proud mum/spouse/infatuated friend may not be very helpful either, unless these people have a literary bent and an uncanny degree of objectivity.  Instead it is better to find someone with experience or a shared interest in writing.  A writers’ group or feedback circle can be one way to find such people, even if this is online.

Receiving feedback in a group situation can be challenging, especially when you have sweated over several revisions of a piece.  It’s good to remember that many people will have many different opinions, and they can’t all be right.  You’re not required to agree with all of them, but do consider their merit.  Be thoughtful.  But also be pragmatic.  Not everyone will be prepared to push themselves into the space where they can understand what it is you were trying to do, especially if it’s different to what they are used to.  Feedback is just a tool.  You can pick it up, and you can also put it down when it’s no longer useful to you. 

Most importantly, criticism is only ever about the work that you've done, and not about you. Take a deep breath and separate the two.  This can be hard when you're just getting started.  That is when feedback can be most fraught but also most beneficial.  So be bold, and invite the challenge.  Treat it like the learning experience that it’s meant to be.  I don’t know if I'll ever discover the truth of exactly how Destination: denoument has fared in the Best Australian Blogs Competition (oh yeah, unless it WINS), but the rigour of being judged has done me some good, regardless.

Blogging workshop - notes

The big day arrived, and I headed out to the South Australian Writers’ Centre for the Just what is blogging? workshop.  It was an interesting and well-structured evening that provided a number of blogging resources to bring home.  And it stimulated some critical reflection about Destination: denouement.  It turns out there are a number of blogging principles that I have been very nonchalantly ignoring since its inception.  (More on that another time).

Much of the two-hour workshop was aimed at people with much less blogging experience than myself.  However there were some pointers worth attending to:

·    Regularity - prunes aren’t just for nannas*.  Readers will lose interest if you don’t turn up up regularly.

·    Scheduling - use the scheduling function in your platform to release posts at a time that works for you and your readers.  Louise posts on a Thursday and then has the weekend as social-media engagement time. 

·    Use your key words in a targeted way – The language in your URL, post titles, first paragraphs all counts. (Uh oh. Multiple infractions by Destination: denouement).

·    Social media is your friend - (I really need to get across the twittosphere).

·    Content, content, content.

This last point was not explicitly stated, but it coalesced in my impressionable brain as the most important idea of the night.  Louise, Jane and Sarah all talked about how they started their blogs and attracted readers, and it was obvious from their stories that content is everything. It’s what attracts a readership and causes it to flourish.  Each of them has a readily visible niche to write to.  Each of them understands exactly what it is they are giving to their audience.  And crucially, they know what value it has to their readers.

*Nanna Jean was an enthusiastic advocate of the power of the prune.

Cake: the ultimate metaphor

There's a certain amount of healthy egotism involved in being a successful author/artist/pastry chef. Not only do you need to believe in what you produce, your belief needs to shine through your craft in such a way that it is visible to other people.  It's an essential element in attracting an audience.      


strawberry cake by Kanko* @ Flickr



Look around. There are thousands of writers out there. Some of them write well, some of them badly, but they all believe they're providing something that is worth someone else's time to consume. We can't all be the next bestselling author, can we? Even if you baked the tastiest cake ever, if every other person at the morning tea has also baked a wonderful cake there's a chance yours might never get eaten. So how does a cake get chosen?  It might be a very ordinary cake that happens to have magnificent icing, or it might be baked by someone whose cake was memorable last time, or maybe everyone saw a similar cake on TV so they think this one will taste good too. The choice of cake is as individual as the people who are choosing it.  So too with writing.

So how does that choice happen?  How do I, as a writer, elevate my craft to the extent that it rolls deliciously off the page and straight onto my intended audience's tongue?

And does it really matter whether I sit here typing away and never make the moves to earn the readership?  Does it matter if I ensconce myself in a long and happy but solitary writing life? If all the work I've ever done slides quietly with me into the grave? 



Yes, it does. It matters to me. And the reason it does - besides a pathetic desire to rise above the ordinary - is because writing, for me, is about connection.  It's not about the cake in and of itself, but about the mysterious transaction that occurs when I invest my time and energy to create something of beauty, something that will nourish another person. And equally, it's about receiving that same gift from others. When I sit quietly, listening to a fellow writer read her work, I'm receiving something precious and true, that has spilled from the very essence of who they are.



This is true of all the great works that we have read - whether they were books, poems, essays, blog posts, letters, published or private. The connection allows us to perceive and honour the great truths and gifts of our lives, whether that is self-knowledge, healing, or simply the power of telling our stories and having them heard. It is so valuable that it is worth reaching through my inadequacies to embrace the necessary self-belief.  And to keep writing.  And sharing my cake.

What is it that motivates you to keep writing and sharing?



Shameless plea - Best Australian Blog

In my ongoing quest to not come last in the Sydney Writers' Centre Best Australian Blogs Competition 2012, I would like to advise that voting in the PEOPLE’S CHOICE round is officially open.

PEOPLE – this means YOU.

CHOICE – you have one. It’s obvious.  Pick Destination: denouement.

It’s easy. Click on the VOTE FOR ME NOW button which will take you to the Voting Page.  Put a tick in the box next to Destination: denouement about 4/5ths of the way down the first page.

You can select as many blogs as you like, but you can only submit the form ONCE – so make sure Destination: denouement is clicked if you want to include a vote for me.

You can also ask all your friends/family/random strangers to do the same, using the share buttons at the bottom of this post, or the Twitter hashtag #bestblogs2012.

  

Apparently there are 940 eager hopefuls in this round.  This means there is lots of fresh and fabulous blogging going on, so even if you don’t vote for me, take a look at the list because it’s a great way to discover some new blogs to love forever. 

Just what is blogging?

Further to my recent aspirations for Destination: denouement to become a Best Australian Blog, I am thrilled to hear there will be a FREE blogging workshop at the South Australian Writers' Centre in April.


"I CAN HAZ BLOG?!"
|indoor| by arquera @ Flickr

Just what is blogging?

The Media Resource Centre, the SA Writers Centre and the MHCSA are proud to present a workshop on blogging on the 17th of April 2012 (YAY!).  The event will be held in the atrium at the SA Writers Centre and feature key speakers Louise Pascale and Jane Howard from the Media Resource Centre (Interesting).

Editors and moderators from mindshare Sarah Reece and Steve Clark will also feature an introduction on getting started as a blogger on line.

In this new world of technology and the internet, ordinary individuals are allowed the space to speak up - online in cyberspace. With seemingly one of the hardest parts of being a blogger – capturing people’s interest and attention in the constantly busy world of the world wide web (That’s what I said!)

Is blogging something you would be interested in doing? (Yes) Does anyone actually read what you write (Maybe… not) or are you just sending things off into the electronic cyber sphere for your own amusement? (Actually, I do it for my virtual future imaginary fans) … As a writer should you bother to blog or not? (Yes.  Obviously).

The evening will cover topics such as 'What a blog is' and 'why some people blog'. You will get tips on how to develop a following and keep people interested as well as some basics on how to get started and work your way around a possibly confounding new electronic age.

Perfect.  In fact they could’ve called it “Blogging for the clueless newbie” and it wouldn’t be any more perfect for me.  (Ok, maybe I’m being a bit harsh on myself.  Destination: denouement is already FABULOUS.  Clearly.  But it would be even better with a readership).

I especially love that this is a community event, born out of a collaboration that aims to support mental health.  Writing is such a powerful tool, for self-expression, for creativity and for enhancing wellbeing.  I believe passionately in the healing power of telling our truths, and hearing those of other people.  Writing allows us to connect with each other energetically, regardless of whether we ever actually meet.  And blogging is an amazing platform for writing – its flexibility provides endless possibilities for unique expression. 

So, yes!  I will be there (with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes) for this very valuable (and I'll say it again, FREE) blogging workshop in Adelaide.  I suggest you get along to it, too.    

Best Australian Blog?

I’m thinking of entering this blog in a competition.  And not just any competition. The Sydney Writers’ Centre Best Australian Blogs Competition.

Destination: denouement – a Best Australian Blog?  How terribly vain.  But I’m heartened by an award category for blogs that are less than 6 months old.  Mostly because Destination: denouement’s newness is its overriding characteristic.  All those hardened blog veterans can’t wave a virtual candle at my level of inexperience and gauche disregard for the conventions of blogging.

The main convention I’ve been flouting* is the one that the competition refers to as engagement.  The popularity-club side of blogging.  I’ve seen it at work in the world of wildly successful mummy blogs, some of which are fabulous.  Others are entirely vacuous and equally popular.  I know it has a lot to do with linking and commenting on other blogs, pushing content across platforms, and riding the fickle wave of popular attention through its erratic three-second shifts.  I understand how soc-med platforms work, but I’m just not very good at it.  Yet.

I’m just as gangly and socially awkward in soc-med circles as I was when I was trying to unravel the mysteries of teenage popularity at school.  I don’t know which was worse – that I didn’t have a clue about popularity or that I didn’t really care.  Despite this insouciance, I shot to the dizzying heights of rock-stardom years later in a library studies course.  I had all the right accessories – ninja search engine skills, smoking hot Dewey Decimal reflexes, and a brown cardigan.  I was the library studies poster child, but this popularity was effortless, not derived from any conscious effort or strategy.  

Blog engagement, on the other hand, requires consistent effort and strategy.  And time.  Whereas I have a cake-eating elephant slowing me down.  The other competition criteria are the quality of writing, and presentation and usability. 



SWC Best Australian Blogs - judging criteria

I will be entering Destination: denouement in the “words and writing” category.  There is also a People’s Choice award, which I am also (hilariously) going to enter, mostly because the irony will have me cackling on the inside for weeks.  Because I’m pretty sure that entering this category at all diminishes my already tiny likelihood of success.  But if you happen upon this post, feel free to humour me with a vote.  Even if it’s only out of appreciation for my sheer contrariness.

All of which amounts to a not very good chance in the Best Australian Blogs competition.  But there are benefits to entering anyway.  Like the possibility that someone like you might actually wander along and stop by for a read.  So I’d better get the place looking tidy and make sure I’ve got the tea and biscuits ready when you do.

*ETA:  flouting ≠ flaunting, which is what I originally wrote.  Edit, people!

Hunger Games

I’ve been hearing people raving about this series for a while now.  Despite my YA antenna being so underdeveloped, and the book being slower to take off in Australia, the excitement about it leaked through to me a while ago.  It has been sitting on my towering pile of books to read for ages.  It took the imminent release of the movie to fire up my hunger enough to start reading.

Glad I did.  It is addictively good, and I found myself glued to the story much like the citizens of Panem are to the Games themselves.

What I love about The Hunger Games series is its resonance on so many layers of meaning and metaphor.  I devoured all three novels in quick succession, but I think they require another reading just to appreciate the craft of the subtext.  In fact, I’m looking forward to having a look at The girl who was on fire, a collection of commentaries by other YA authors.  There is plenty for an aspiring author to glean from The Hunger Games, because Collins does much with quite simple language.  She delivers an intricate story in very clear and quick writing.  Specifically, in short sentences.  Now, there’s something I could learn.

There is some lovely work in the story that ensures it will have wide appeal.  The hair/clothes/makeup in Capitol are richly painted, and the feasts are detailed for all the foodies out there.  I especially enjoyed the subleties of the character names and the added meaning they imparted - Peetr = Peter = Rock, steady, strong, versus Gale = tempestuous, changeable.  These names are woven all through the series (Snow, Trinket), but my favorite is Rue, because of the deep sorrow and regret that Katniss experiences as a result of their interaction.  The meaning of names has always fascinated me, and I just love it as a literary device.

I haven’t read much about Suzanne Collins’ writing process for this series, but there are some interesting shifts as the novels progress.  The writing in the first book is much sparer and tighter in its sentence structure than in the next two.  It is as if she finds her stride and starts to feel more comfortable to explore the expressive space inside the storyline.  There is progression too, from the very heavily plot-driven narrative of the first novel, to the series resolution which is nearly entirely psychological in nature.  She lures the reader from the bold, apparent facts of the story and into a more interior experience of the themes that she set out to explore. 

Despite having loved all three books equally, I will admit to denouement disappointment  in Mockingjay – I felt the finale was unnecessarily convoluted, and because of that it lost the fluidity and taut pacing that typified the previous resolutions.  However, credit should be given to Collins for creating a thought-provoking resolution, instead of the formulaic version which so often typifies both YA and speculative fic.

Suzanne Collins herself adapted the book for film, which makes me even keener to see it.  Her background is in screenwriting for children, and it has obviously served her well in developing both the experience and expertise to deliver a trilogy of this calibre.

Double life

“Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice:  once in reality and once more in the mirror which waits always before and behind [her].” ~ Donald Murray



Reflections (A) by camil tulcan @ flickr

Faulty?



English Electric Refrigerator Ad, 1950
by alsis35 @ flickr

So, the repairman is here, repairing our brand new fridge.  Why should a ten-day old fridge need repairing?  That’s the question I’ve asked, futilely, a number of times over the last 24 hours.  They should be replacing this “brand new” fridge, and not repairing it.  But the timing and a tide of unbending service staff are against me.



So, what do I do when the stress of an unsolvable problem hangs heavy upon me?  I open my pink laptop and I write. It’s an instant panacea for my woes.  Like a drug, I can feel the calm seeping again into my veins as I type.  The stress clutching at the back of my skull begins to unfurl and starts to slink away. 

Does this mean I’m just a tiny bit unhinged?  Or faulty, like the fridge? 



Quite possibly.  I’m open to that.  I’m also open to the power of having a tool as richly and instantly rewarding as an open laptop as my stillpoint.  There are worse ways to bear up - or buckle - under pressure. 

But I do well to remind myself that a row or three of words is a curiously fragile path to tread on the way to wellbeing.  

Criticism or compliment?

Why would she ask that?  What did she mean?

So, it was Thursday, and writer’s group day again (my favourite day of the week). Our group is thriving – so much that we’ve now had to close off the membership list.  Once a month we read our themed pieces to the group, originally for feedback, but with all our keen writers, it is an increasingly cursory process.

The week’s theme was Summer Menu.  I read a strange little piece I’d concocted, in which I red-herringed the reader merrily through a scene, then kicked them with a cunning reveal right at the end.  The protagonist, it turns out, is not who the reader thinks he is, and a chilly shadow falls over the previously sunny story line.  As reveals go, it was pretty smooth, and it got a spectacular response.

A wave of exclamations rippled around the table, a good sign that the ending had its desired effect.  A couple of people complimented me on deploying the creepiness factor so well.  And then one lady piped up, “Is this part of a novel you’re writing?”

This threw me, and before I could formulate a counter-question it was time to move on.  And I’ve been stewing it over ever since.  Why would she ask that?  What did she mean? 

Was it a compliment?  Like, “Wow, that scene was so well constructed with exactly the right amount of subtext about the world outside the room, that it could have been a novel excerpt.”  Or was it a veiled criticism?  Like, “I didn’t really get the point of it, and I haven’t read a short story that takes place within a single scene, and I couldn’t recognise a beginning, middle and an ending, so clearly it has to be a fragment of a larger work because it doesn’t hang together by itself. “  

Compliment or criticism?  This is one of those times when I wish for a more detailed feedback mechanism.

I made some very deliberate choices about the structure of the piece.  I placed it entirely within a single scene, because I wanted to flesh it out rather than just narrate through a string of events.  I habitually write characters within a very interior frame, without embedding them into their physical surrounds.  This is disaster-territory for novel writing, where it’s important to show, not tell.  So I’ve been consciously working on creating settings, and moving the plot along in concrete, external ways. 

Everything in the story is there for a reason (something that I’ve been learning since coming very late but passionately to JK Rowling), but there’s no hurry to get there.  I would rather you know that my protagonist wears a cream silk cravat and has long fingers, than tell you that he was impeccably dressed or tall.  If I write enough of these sorts of scenes, it should (in theory, anyway) build the kind of skills that I need to write a first novel that is worth reading.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter whether the story was criticised as a short piece.  Regardless of why the question was asked, it was a good sign that I’m developing the kind of tone and pacing that is suitable for longer works. 

One step closer to denouement.