Help your book succeed

When it comes to the world of writing, my approach has been to focus on the things I can control. I can’t control whether my book is a best seller or wins literary awards. But I can turn up. Do the work. Finish the book.

(Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design)

After finishing my manuscript, I couldn’t control whether people were going to respond to my work the way I wanted. But I could take the pitch I wrote seriously and do the very best job I was capable of doing. Part of the way I did that was to build connections via twitter and facebook to demonstrate to publishers my willingness to engage with the wider world. 

Why? Because even with all our technological advances, most people still read books based on recommendations from trusted sources. I wanted to increase the network of people I spoke to, build relationships with them so that maybe, just maybe, some of these people might read my book. And maybe, just maybe, they would like it. And maybe, just maybe, they would tell their friends about it. So that some day people outside my family and friends might actually be willing to read something I had written.

Sure, some authors refuse to engage with twitter, facebook, pinterest, instagram etc. They stay in their writing cave and produce wonderful works. Some of these authors are very successful and they don’t need to do anything more than put words on a page. If you are one of these authors, I salute you. You rock.

If, like the rest of us, you are starting out on your career, you might want to consider getting over yourself. Like it or not, publishing is a business. The business of selling books. If you are lucky enough to get a contract with a publishing house, your book becomes a commodity. Your publishing house will work their butts off to make sure it sells, but your efforts as the author of the work, can make a real difference.

From where I stand (someone whose first book is about to come out) it seems like a very risky move to loiter on the sidelines and hope for the best, praying that you are somehow special; that you will be one of the chosen few who need to make no effort apart from writing a book, for it to be successful.

Before selling this manuscript, I didn’t really understand how the publishing industry worked. I thought when an author got an advance, it was a lump sum payment for the years of toil it took to create a book. I then imagined as soon as the book hit the shelves, an author started earning royalties. 

But that is not how it works. If you are lucky enough to sell your manuscript, the amount they pay for your book is an advance on sales they anticipate your book will achieve. Once book sales have paid back the advance, then you start pocketing extra. Of course this makes perfect sense, but it also means I now feel a genuine responsibility to pay back the money my publishers have invested.

I am lucky enough to be with a big publishing house, and they have put their large marketing team behind the book because they too want to earn their money back. But I need to do something with the anxiety I feel that my book will turn out to be a total failure and everyone will hate it and only ten people will buy it and the lovely people at Penguin will put a black mark next to my name that says, “this author sucks and she stole our money,” or something like that.

The way I am choosing to deal with this anxiety, is if there is something within my power to do – get on twitter, write a facebook post, write an article, think about what I am going to wear to my book launch – I am going to do it.

I am going to go all in on this, because at least then if I fail, I have done so giving it everything I’ve got. I will not walk away saying ‘what if.’ What if I had done more. What if I had tried harder. It seems a bigger risk to me to be half-arse because “real artists don’t promote themselves,” than it does to do the best you can at everything related to your book.

I am not talking about spruking your book on high rotation on your twitter stream. That is totally half-arsed. If you don’t know how to use facebook or twitter, read articles on how to do it. Arm yourself with knowledge to make sure your efforts count. Lots of people have written excellent blog posts on this stuff. Seriously. If you don’t know how to do it, figure it out. It doesn’t cost any money, and you might even come to enjoy it.

Some people think the marketing stuff is below their dignity. I say screw dignity. Help your book succeed. Go all in.

Is writing a memoir cathartic?

Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design

During the past year, when I have told people the book I was writing was a memoir, one of the most common responses they had was to say, “That must be cathartic.”

To me, these people (most of whom like to point out to me that they don’t read memoir) seemed to have the notion that a memoir was like a journal; an unfiltered blah about your life heaped onto a page.

My initial response was to bristle at the implication. I was writing a BOOK for God’s sake! A serious tome of great literary value! I was not (insert shudder here) keeping a journal (sniffs and walks off).

I found myself saying to these non-memoir reading folk, “I have had a lot of therapy. I would definitely say I found that cathartic. I’m not sure I would use that word to describe the process of writing a book.”

But on reflection, I think there has been catharsis during the creation of ENEMY (my book).

The word catharsis means:
1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art.
2.  the discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

 In relation to definition one, I have definitely found myself shaking with fear, sobbing or laughing during the writing of this book, so there is that. (But I also think many creators of works of fiction describe having these bodily responses as they write. How else can you give authentic form to intense emotional moments?).

But not only did I feel those feelings, when I now look back on the memories from which they sprang, they don’t seem to have the same hold on me. It feels like much of the emotional energy tied to those moments are trapped inside the book (kind of like Voldemort putting part of his soul into the diary Ginny writes in in Harry Potter, though hopefully with less potential for part of my soul to be killed if someone stabs the book with a Basalisk fang).

Looking at the second definition of catharsis, it is the word permanent that stands out for me. Only time will tell, but I do feel there may have been a profound ongoing shift in the way I think about my Dad after writing this book.

It is true, a large part of ENEMY involved bearing witness for the child whose voice was never heard. But the other part of the book, the research into the Vietnam War, trying to understand what it was like for boys who were sent there to fight (Dad included), and what they went through when they returned to home soil, that process of discovery has ceased to be an intellectual exercise for me.

By struggling against my innate desire to continue to see things from my childhood perspective – black and white, right and wrong – I have allowed my memories of Dad to soften into a more complicated shade of grey.

Douglas Robert Callum was not only my father. He was also an innocent boy, who at the age of 20 was conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War. He came back damaged. He needed help. He didn’t get it. His family bore the brunt of his pain.

The way I now see my dad will forever be re-shaped by my understanding of all he endured, and the inner battles he was struggling with. I could never condone or justify many of his actions, but I have tapped into a well of genuine compassion for him that I really hope is permanent.

So if anyone now asks me if writing a memoir has been cathartic, I believe I can answer yes.

ENEMY is due for release in March 2016 through Penguin Books.

Making time to write

Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design

I don't know about you, but I love seeing how people fit writing into their lives. Here’s the way I found time to write my first book.

To paint a bit of a picture of my world for you, you need to know I have two kids, Mister Three and Miss Seven. Miss Seven is at primary school Monday to Friday, and Mister Three is mostly at home with me, but goes to child-care two days a week.

Those two days are my absolutely non-negotiable, bum-on-the-seat writing days, though they are never long enough. (I still have to drop Miss Seven to school, where I am NOT allowed to leave before final farewell kisses after her morning assembly, then drive Mister Three to child care. At his drop-off, there are more farewell kisses and an elaborate routine of pretending I have lost him, asking people if they have seen where he is, before he “surprises” them with his presence from behind my back. By the time I am back home, it is ten o’clock… on a good day.) At 3.25 pm I then hurl myself through the school gates to collect Miss Seven, before picking up Mister Three.

Though I am not naturally inclined to work at night, when I started to get pressure from a publisher to show him my book, I realised those ten hours a week were not going to be enough to get the job done. So I scrabbled around to find more time, aiming for two hours each night once the kids were in bed.

When I sent the manuscript to an agent and she urged me to have a draft ready for publishers a month ahead of the deadline I had set for myself, I squeezed out extra time on the weekends. Near the end of my ready-for-publishers draft, I was doing ten hours on Mister Three’s child-care days, two hours a night seven nights a week, and at least six hours a day on the weekends. That’s thirty-six hours I managed to steal out of my life (though it did mean I barely saw anyone except my husband and children, and them only during meal times).

 Still, though at the time I thought it would kill me, I managed to get my draft out within a reasonable amount of time.

 I have now even forgotten the promise I made to myself that I would never write a book again. It’s kind of like giving birth that way. You think to yourself, “Who would put themselves through that again?” Then you start looking at Huggies commercials and thinking, “Aren’t babies cuuute?”

So while I am waiting to begin editing my first book, I am using the spare time I have carved out of my world to begin sketching out ideas for the next one. 

 How do you make time to write?

Improve your writing voice by reading what you REALLY like

A few weeks ago, I heard an interview with crime author Nigel Bartlett on my favourite writing podcast: So You Want to be a Writer.

In the interview, Nigel spoke about the way the friends he was holidaying with, looked down on his reading matter when he produced a page-turning crime thriller, instead of one of the more literary books he normally forced himself to read. He has now gone on to be a very successful crime writer, so I hope he told his friends to stick that in their pipes and smoke it.

I have to say, as a new writer, I do find a lot of members of the writing fraternity guilty of the same snobbery. I have been accosted a number of times by wannabe writers who have demanded I tell them my favouirte books/ authors. When my answer doesn’t match their far superior literary tastes, the holier-than-thou sneery look they give me lets me know I am now an object of pity, right at the bottom rung of their “worthy of talking to about writing” ladder.

Well, I have news for them. I don’t give a toss about their ladder. I think most of them are phony baloney. Surely, if the number of people who allege to love literary fiction actually loved it, those books would be on best-seller lists, rather than struggling with modest sales.

I am an avid reader. I have pretty much read at least a book a week since I was a kid. During my many decades long love affair with books I have gone through a horror phase, an Austen phase, a feminist phase, a classics phase, a self-help phase, a memoir phase, a crime thriller phase, a chick lit phase, a young adult phase, and yes, of course, a “worthy literarature” phase.

Some of the genres I have read I have fallen deeply in love with, and continue to read to this day. Others have been flings that I look back on with a chuckle. Some books I have read because I felt I ought to. Other books I couldn’t put down. While I can appreciate the “important” tomes, it is the ones that get my heart racing that I really love.

We are all a unique bundle of genes and life experiences, on our own distinct journeys. Why shouldn’t our diversity extend to our reading tastes?

Reading the books you are “meant” to read because they have “literary merit” is a sure-fire way to suck the fun out of reading. The people who tell me they struggle to read a couple of paragraphs the book on their bedside table each night ARE READING THE WRONG BOOK. It’s time to take a different fork in the road.

So how does reading books you don’t love affect your writing? I have not conducted scientific experiments on this, but it seems logical to me that if you write in a way you think will make you seem impressive and “literary”, rather than the way that is true to who you are and what you REALLY like, your reader will be able to tell because your voice will sound self-conscious. And if you don’t even feel comfortable admitting to reading what you like, how are you going to be comfortable writing what you like?

Because if you aren’t comfortable it will show in your voice.

 On Grammar Girl’s, Quick and Dirty Tips (http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/understanding-voice-and-tone-in-writing) Julie Wildhaber describes it this way…

Voice is the distinct personality, style, or point of view of a piece of writing or any other creative work. Voice is what Simon Cowell is talking about when he tells "American Idol" contestants to make a song their own and not just do a note-for-note karaoke version. Many musicians have played "The Star-Spangled Banner," for instance, but there's a world of difference between the Boston Pops' performance and Jimi Hendrix's, even though the basic melody is the same.

From the reading I have done, voice is the one thing that can’t really be taught. It is the thing you as a writer need to discover for yourself, and my non-scientific theory is that it is closely connected to knowing who you really are, including being true to the types of books you really, in your heart of hearts, like to read.

Do you think being true to yourself as a reader could help unlock your writers voice?

How to keep going when you hit a hump with your writing

Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design

I have to tell you something about myself. While I probably err on the side of the half-empty glass in many areas of life, when it came to writing a book, I saw a cup not only half full, but overflowing.

I blame copywriting. After being a copywriter for a decade, I have become pretty good at a quick turnaround on my words. I figured writing a book would be like writing 1000 words multiplied by 80. Easy peasey.

But oh, ho, ho, how wrong I was. I have read that it is unseemly to complain about how hard writing a book is. But IT WAS REALLY HARD. There. I’ve done it. You are free to call me unseemly, or a whinger, or an unseemly whinger. Whatevs.

Since I am now already labelled, let me wallow a bit more. For a start, having never written a book before, I didn’t expect it to be so complicated. It might seem apparent to everyone else in the universe, but it wasn’t until I started this process that I realised a book is not just a Frankenstein collection of disparate thousand word sections – at least not the kind of book I wanted to write – it is a living, breathing beast that has to work as a whole. Before I found scrivener, I nearly drove myself RED RUM crazy trying to devise ways of keep up with the flow of the story. (If you are struggling with this, scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php is seriously awesome. And no, I am not paid to say that).

But still, scrivener wasn’t everything I needed to hold the book together. I had to understand how a book worked before I could feel like I actually knew how to write one. I read obsessively on scene and structure, plot, character development, style and voice. I listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts on writing techniques as well as author interviews. Though I also read fiction, I couldn’t switch off. While occasionally getting pulled into the world of a book, more often than not I analysed the writing, took apart the structure and tracked the character arc. (Did I mention I trained as a biochemist and am prone to obsessive, scientific analysis when I feel out of my depth?)

So, why am I telling you this and how does it help you to get over your hump? On reflection, I think my panic at not knowing what the hell I was doing was actually a good thing for keeping my inspiration going and helping me avoid writers block.

Writing a book requires a step-up of energy that can be hard to muster, especially if you are also working a day job and/ or looking after kids. To make this new energy, you have to feed your creative fire.

I am not suggesting everyone go to crazy town in  exactly the same way I did, but if you are sitting in front of an empty screen feeling defeated, it is easy to let the voices creep in, the ones that tell you you aren’t any good. Those voices drain your energy and make your creative self want to curl up in a ball. It is hard to keep your fingers on the keyboard when you are hunched over in foetal position.

Even if you don’t let those voices win, and remain diligently locked in a battle with the empty page, there is no guarantee the muse is going to turn up. Sometimes, when you feel stuck, or low on motivation, filling your head with techniques and ideas from people who have walked the path ahead of you can be a great way to keep your juices flowing and the ideas coming.

It might not work for everyone, but if you are feeling down in the dumps about your draft, why not try hunting for inspiration? Pick up a book on writing, read a publisher’s blog, find a new podcast, get lost in a book by an author you love. The worst thing that could happen is you learn something; the best might be that you  finish your book.

Study into the impact of Vietnam War on the next generation

Photo of my Dad at the site of the Battle of Coral

A few years ago, I was one of 27,000 Australian people who participated in an intergenerational Vietnam Veterans Family study. The results of that report have just been released. In many ways my memoir is a personal story that makes meaning of these statistics.

Extracts from the study
The report contains hundreds of pages of documentation. In italics below I have included some of the key findings that most strongly relate to the themes of my book.

The answer to the question of whether the service of Australian men in the Vietnam War had adverse effects on the physical, mental and social health of their sons and daughters is ‘Yes’. It is enormously important to have that answer, but that was not the only thing the Vietnam Veterans Family Study brought to light. Collectively, the study projects show that the experience of war is not confined to the time between the passing-out parade and returning home and that families as well as those deployed are intimately involved in the experience.

The first important thing to note from the findings for the sons and daughters is the pattern of the differences found. Significant differences were found for most of the measures of mental health (ever diagnosed with or treated for depression, anxiety or posttraumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts, and suicidal plans or actions).

In the case of physical health among the sons and daughters, only three measures out of 16 showed significant differences between the two groups. Notably, those three measures were all conditions for which psychological factors are strongly implicated—skin conditions, migraines and sleep disturbance.

In the case of depression, anxiety, and suicidal plans and actions, the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans were almost twice as likely as the sons and daughters of Vietnam-era personnel to report being diagnosed with or treated for depression, being diagnosed with or treated for anxiety, or making plans for or attempting suicide. Reports of being diagnosed with or treated for posttraumatic stress disorder were three times more common for the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans.

In relation to the measures of family environment when the children were growing up, three of the eight factors differed significantly between the Vietnam veteran families and the families of Vietnam-era personnel (as reported by the sons and daughters)
1. a father’s caring attitude towards his child
2. a father’s overprotective or controlling behaviour
3. an indicator of harsh parenting during childhood.

23 per cent of offspring of Vietnam veteran families reported at least one of five items on harsh parenting; this compares with 9.1 per cent of offspring of Vietnam-era personnel. It is noteworthy that the three items that contributed most to this difference were:
- verbal abuse
- too much physical punishment
- and a question covering humiliation, ridicule, bullying or mental cruelty

Strictness and regimentation were recurrent themes in the accounts of growing up in a Vietnam veteran family: ‘His whole life he was a disciplinarian and I think sometimes he went too far’ and ‘He treated us like we were in the Army’.

The extent to which some fathers ‘went too far’ was alluded to or more overtly described in other comments.

For some of the sons and daughters these events influenced their view of themselves. They grew up thinking their father’s volatility was their fault and they were ‘bad kids’.

The sons and daughters themselves were aware that their father’s wartime experiences had contributed to problems in their family and, even if they had been born after their father’s return from Vietnam, knew the war had made a difference: "My Mum said that my Dad came back a completely different person. Before he went he never smoked or drank and when he came back he did both. He had bad dreams but we were shielded from all of that."

For many Vietnam veterans and their families the war did not end in 1973. Nor did it end with the 1987 Welcome Home parade or the 1992 opening of the Vietnam Forces National Memorial in Canberra. It is hoped that publication of this report will prompt new initiatives. The research thus far has produced findings that can help direct assistance for Defence Force families in the future, in order to diminish the intergenerational transmission of problems seen among the sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans. That alone would be fitting recognition of the efforts of those who lobbied for and participated in the Vietnam Veterans Family Study.


Knowing so many other people whose fathers served in Vietnam had childhoods like mine makes me feel very sad. But this last idea, that we can learn new strategies for helping defence force personnel so their war doesn't get passed onto their families, is something very dear to my heart.

Has anyone else had a personal experience of living with a parent who has been to war? I wonder whether these statistics ring true for you too.

To all the Children of Vietnam Veterans out there, I hope you are being kind to yourselves.

Writer's Tsunami

I know it has been a long time between posts, but I have had a good excuse for going AWOL.

For a start, I have sent my first draft to a publisher, and I now have an agent. I know! It looks like my book might actually be published. How scarytastic is that?

Illustration copyright Matt Clare at Mono Design

I have also taken on board advice about how to improve my first draft which has required me to:
- get in contact with Vietnam Veterans
- interview Veterans
- do more extensive research on the Vietnam War
- do more extensive research on PTSD
- read books on structure to make the flow of material work better

Oh, and one of the new threads I am writing has forced me to reassess the entire nature of the relationship I have with my deceased father? Yeah, no biggie.

I keep thinking I should write a blog post, but then I get an email from a Veteran, or a brain wave about my story goal, or a new piece of Vietnam history drops into my lap, or I freak out about how the hell I am going to pull this whole thing together and read non-fiction books for hours to see how other people do it.

At least I don't have writer's block. What is the opposite of that? Writer's tsunami? That's what it feels like: a huge wave of information and ideas bearing down on me that I am running full pelt to keep up with. I keep siphoning off what I can, scribbling notes, recording thoughts into a dictaphone, making phone calls, writing, reading, editing. But I still feel like I am barely keeping up.

I am looking forward to the day when the wave finally levels out so I can start editing. Then I can send out the second draft to some of my cleverest friends for feedback. And edit again. Did I mention all of this has to happen before the end of the year because my agent has let publishers know she will be "sending my manuscript wide" then?

I wish I could borrow Hermione Granger's time turner to buy me some extra time. I will keep you posted on how I go. Or, given my track record of sporadic blogging, maybe not.

Have you ever had a writer's tsunami?