Monthly Archives: August 2011

the biology of self-defeating thoughts

Here’s an epiphany I had last night that definitely turns me into a scientist or something:

When I won the Valerie Parv Award last July, part of my prize was a critique from a senior Harlequin editor in New York, Leslie Waigner. I had completely given up on hearing from her, but a couple of weeks ago her critique arrived. It was comprehensive, engaged with my work, and made many good points. It was also useless because my MS has changed completely in the meantime.

However, she was interested in seeing a revised draft, so I sent her what I have. A couple of days ago she sent another critique and basically said that the story’s not working for her, and she doesn’t want to see any more versions of it.

The worst thing is that I would never have queried Harlequin with it anyway, because I know that it’s not the kind of book they would publish. A rejection all for nothing! It’s been scrolling through my mind though, recently, and making me wonder whether it’s time to give up on this story, and whether my writing will ever really be good enough, and whether maybe it’s time to put words away for a while…

Then last-night I stopped mid-monologue and thought: “Hey! Why is my brain recycling this useless stuff back at me! What’s the point?” And I wasn’t thinking in terms of emotionally-learnt responses to possible failure, I was thinking what the mechanical, biological reason for such self-defeating thoughts could possibly be.

Here’s what occurred to me: Given that we’re the product of adaptation and survival, it makes sense that our brains sift logically through the paraphernalia of every situation to evaluate whether we should proceed or not. It’s basically risk-evaluation.

So rather than seeing my brain as somehow emotionally opposed to me succeeding (evil-brain), I saw my brain as doing mechanical calculations for risk, success, survival (this brain is neither good nor evil. It’s a slightly anxious nerd who doesn’t really get the nuance of human interaction and just kept going with its calculations because nobody told it to stop).

Instead of those thoughts being crippling, and eroding, I could say, “Oh yeah, thanks brain, but we’re all good here.”

And I could evaluate other parts of the equation. Like the fact that Leslie Waigner stressed how much she’d love to see my next project. Like the fact that one of the Allen & Unwin girls told me she only gives full critiques to writers she adores. Like the fact that this might take a while, but I’m doing it no matter what.

I might be a scientist, too.

a tv-aholic watches the slush pile

The other day, with nothing better to do, I started watching a new show on iView called Valemont. Exactly 29 seconds later I stopped watching it.

This is why:

On the black screen, there is a mobile phone, and on the phone’s screen there is a young man recording himself. He looks like a jock, carefree and cocky. He says, with mock menace, ”Hey! So if you’re watching this, I lost my phone. Do the right thing, man. Give it back. Or else – I’ma find your ass!”

The show’s title comes up onscreen. Then we see a wet-haired, leather-clad, eyeliner-happy woman walk into a room somewhere and we hear her thoughts as voiceover:

Problem was, I never could find Eric’s ass.

Aaaaaaaand I stopped watching.

I could almost forgive the really bad “clever” writing (her recycling his words) if her emphasis had been on the right word. Surely, as Eric was the one who’d threatened to find someone’s ass, for her sentence to make any sense it would have had to be, “I never could find Eric‘s ass.”

Right? Right?

 

#rwaus11

I cannot believe my luck. I was silly enough not to have taken that giant step into participation and bought myself a ticket to this year’s Romance Writers of Australia conference – but two days ago a free ticket fell into my lap.

A day and a half in, it is amazing. The workshops are great, but the very best thing is just being around that many other women (and three men) who are all as passionate about romance as I am – and who all take becoming professional very seriously.

The best things I’ve heard so far:

Bernadette Foley from Hachette said, “This has become the most important writers conference in Australia.”

Quickly backed up by Clare Forster of Curtis Brown saying, “Yes, this is the one event agents and editors really can’t afford to miss.”

Interesting to see Penguin, Random House and Allen & Unwin all present for the first time. They’re all facing the reality of e-publishing – and realising that romance owns the market. I felt like they were all still trying to distance themselves a bit from romance, but great to see them there!

Enlightening, watching Kristin Nelson read the slush pile out loud (a volunteer reads the first two pages of manuscripts provided by attendees, and Kristin narrates her thoughts aloud for our benefit, and then tells us when she would have stopped reading and why). The main criticism was: In close third, I need to feel what the narrator is feeling. (e.g. lots of characters coming round from being drugged or similar, but without a fuzzy, fractured quality to the narration.)

And lastly – a really simple, effective way to test that your protagonist has transformed throughout the book: Place your character from the beginning of the story into the situation at the end of the story. They should fail. (This one thanks to Bob Mayer.)

what moves you?

special k and I went to see The Illusionist the other day – a wonderful/sad film, that made me more excited than ever to jet off to Scotland at the end of the month.

If you’ve seen other Sylvain Chomet films (like The Triplets of Belleville), you’ll know that he directs movement in a way that is only loosely connected to reality – but that is somehow truer for being free of constraint. In The Illusionist the magician vacates the stage for a jazz singer who moves from the spine and shoulders in a directional pull against her hips. Her feet are not drawn, she does not walk – she twists and glides across the stage. His cars never move because their tires go round, they move half-magic half-beast down streets and round corners because they have somewhere to be.

It struck me as an incredible way to show movement – as driven not by the mechanical process, but by one meaningful part. I didn’t think it would be possible to write movement in the same way until I came across this description by P.G. Wodehouse:

…the only signs of life visible were a cat stropping its back against the Jubilee Watering Trough…

[from Money for Nothing]

Jane Eyre the movie

Special k woke me at an ungodly (are gods sleeper-inners?) hour this morning, but it had a positive outcome. I was lying in bed reading at 8am, and checked the local movie times, as you do, and noticed an advance screening of Jane Eyre at 11am.

*happy dance from a prone bed-position*

I have been waiting close to a year for this film, and found it almost unbearable when it was shucked back to an August release in Aus. So added to that joy was the joy of going to a movie on my own, which I so rarely do these days (the film industry is dying). The cinema was practically full, which I hadn’t expected and didn’t much like, but luckily I have absorbed by osmosis special k’s preference for sitting right up the front of the cinema, and I had the whole row to myself.

ahem.

I adored the movie – and there were parts that didn’t quite hit the right notes for me.

I thought the structure was really brilliant, weaving her history in with her current position living with her cousins (although they do away with that mighty coincidence in the film, and Jane just chooses to adopt them). I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of flashbacks, because the ms I’m reading for Allen & Unwin at the moment uses this structure too. What that book hasn’t quite managed yet, and this film did beautifully, was to juxtapose images and events between ‘then’ and ‘now’ that create a world of meaning by being brought up against each other.

The structure had an interesting effect on the romance as well; her relationship to St John seemed interesting and full of possibilities – until you came to understand what he would have to (could never) compete with.

The romance was utterly convincing, but I found the melodrama a little overplayed, which was a shame. Our writing teachers are forever telling us that as soon as you show a character crying, the reader will feel their pain less, and that was very true for me here. On the other hand I wanted more man-pain from Fassbender, so I’m not quite sure how those two critiques can be levelled out… I find myself with these conflicting reactions to writing more often these days: less of a thing and more of it as well. Will think further about that.

I came away swelled up with the feeling of earnest, life-or-death romance, and realised that even the best romance novels I read don’t quite achieve that. Another thing to think further about.

And now to the important question. Is this my favourite adaptation yet? I should be clear that the only other contender is the 2006 tv adaptation, written by the brilliant Sandy Welch. In some ways that version satisfied me more deeply than the movie – maybe partly because they had more time. I loved how Jane was really able to experience herself for the first time through Rochester’s regard, and their chemistry was without fault. The movie on the other hand looked absolutely stunning, and I thought Jane was made complex in a different way – as when she looks to the horizon and damns her inability to travel beyond it, as a man could.

A scene that both did brilliantly was the first interview between Jane and Rochester. In the tv adaptation he asks her whether she thinks him handsome, and she answers no with a devilish look in her eye, which makes him laugh. She shares in his laugh. In the movie, he asks the same, but as though he already knows her answer. When she does the unexpected, he is perplexed, his mastery of his world is shaken.

Both wonderful.

Will ponder this further, also.

(the above image was taken from Three Cheers for Darkened Years, where there’s a great review of the film – more coherent and focussed than mine…)

what you don’t say may be used to further your character (or is that too daggy?)

I’m preparing notes for my class talk this semester (on the mesmerising Dog Boy by Eva Hornung) and it made me realise that I never said anything good about Peter Temple’s Truth, which I struggled through last semester. I did find something to admire in it very much – an example of realistic dialogue that progresses character beautifully, by what it assumes.

The detective, Villani, is talking to his dad, Bob. Bob begins:

‘Gordie’s Gordie. Be here five minutes after Luke shows up.’

‘Doesn’t do that for me.’

‘Scared of you.’

‘Bullshit.’

After this exchange half a day passes, in which Villani mows the lawn and thinks a lot about the trees he and Bob planted when he was wee. Pages later they share a beer and are talking about other things.

They sat on the shady side of the house. After a while, Villani said, ‘Why’s Gordon scared of me?’

‘Bob wiped a beer tidemark from his upper lip. ‘Well, you know. People.’

‘What?’

Bob frowned at the landscape. ‘You’ve got a manner.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Boss manner.’

Initially Villani outright dismisses Bob’s statement that Gordie’s scared of him. The conversation moves right on from ‘Bullshit’, and we’ve no reason to think that’s not the end of it.

Almost half a day later, Villani doesn’t say ‘Is Gordie scared of me? or ‘Why did you say Gordie’s scared of me?’ His phrasing suggests not only that he hasn’t forgotten what Bob said, but that he’s been thinking it through and come to the conclusion, through his own reflection, that Bob’s right. The conversation has progressed without us.

There’s one last coda to the sequence – the next day when Villani’s leaving:

‘The finances,’ said Villani. ‘Coping?’

Bob Villani flexed his arms. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Just asking.’

‘That boss stuff,’ said Bob.

Bob refers again to Villani’s ‘boss manner’, though Villani’s behaviour is not in the context of Gordie or the other boys. What they discussed has become part of their history, and their shorthand vocabulary of expression with each other.

some things about Mrs Gaskell, to start us off

Community service announcement: There Is No Last Chapter Of Wives And Daughters.

I have been telling this to everyone I know, even people who have never heard of that great Victorian novelist of the everyday, because I reached page 648 (648!) before I found out. Instead of the anticipated chapter, there was a note from the editor, regretting to inform me that Mrs Gaskell died before she could complete the book.

You can imagine my shock, and devastation. Nowhere in canon mythology is it made clear that this smack to the head is coming.

Thank god for BBC adaptations.

Next: I wish I had written this exchange (between Molly and the poor/creepy Mr Preston – she trying to convince him Cynthia does not want to marry him):

‘I cannot tell about other people,’ said Molly, ‘I only know that Cynthia does–’ Here she hesitated for a moment; she felt for his pain, and so she hesitated; but then she brought it out, – ‘does as nearly hate you as anybody like her ever does hate.’

‘Like her?’ said he, repeating the words almost unconsciously, seizing on anything to try and hide his mortification.

‘I mean, I should hate worse,’ said Molly in a low voice.

Brilliant, brilliant dialogue, Mrs Gaskell! It turns Molly superhuman.

And now, to finish this small list of things:

From North and South, my favourite adaptation EVER. Including Pride and Prejudice. (I’m sorry Colin, but your see-through shirt cannot compete with Richard Armitage’s man-pain.)