Month: October 2018

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Writers Do More Than Write Books

carolyncordon

Yes I am a writer, and have written seven books so far, with a few others planned for the future, but I, and many other writers write many things other than simply books. One of my writing roles I am the most proud of, is being the Editor of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle. This is a monthly newsletter, which has been going since around 2005, back when I had a ‘proper’ job.

I was the ‘Mallala and Dublin Towns Coordinator’ at the time, working for the Mallala Economic Development Board, part-time, in the Mallala Council Office. It was a new role, and the duties were many and varied. There was much involvement with various community related things in both Mallala and Dublin.

I had taken the job over from someone else, which is never an ideal situation, but I tried to do the best I could, at that job, and apart from waking up and worrying in the middle of the night, almost every night, for the two years I was doing the job, I enjoyed it!

The secretary of the MEDB and I went to a community builders workshop while I was there, and we had to look at a community project we could do, and we decided creating a new workshop for the town of Mallala would be a good thing, so we worked on getting that started.

I left that job, after my time was up, and I couldn’t find more funding for the role, and the other person moved on to other things, but I kept going with the Chronicle. I am very proud of that newsletter, the way it has grown, more and more people in business are happy to pay to advertise in it. When the Chronicle began, it was two A4 pages, printed back and front, so four pages of printing. The most recent issue is I think 23 pages of printing, and it brings in a tidy some of money, when the advertising payments come in.

The writing group I’m involved with, as foundation member and President, is the auspicing body for the Chronicle, which means the writing group gets the advertising money, which is a very handy amount for a small volunteer group, which runs a few different things – a monthly poetry reading, an annual and national poetry competition, and an annual Festival of Words. I am proud of all of these things, and of the fine people from the writing group who work on them with me!

As the Editor of the Chronicle, it is my role to source material from various people – community groups, politicians, the local doctor’s office, local council people, and really, anyone with interesting things the people of Mallala might find interesting. The newsletter is created in colour, and is available online in that presentation, but the copies that are printed are in black and white, because colour is too expensive.

I feel like the mother of this newsletter, and even after over ten years, I still get a kick out of someone telling me they enjoyed reading it, and I still get a bit of a thrill from being the creator of every new issue! I collected and delivered the October Mallala Crossroad Chronicle today, and even though I managed to get a paper cut from the newsletters I delivered to the Post Office, that bled and bled and bled after, I still love the Chronicle!

Writing

History of My Writing Life

carolyncordon

A relevant Facebook post from today, here.

My writing career is made up of many parts, some lonely, some joyful and many stages in between. The Facebook post talks about the beginning of my writing, back at Primary School, and brings you into the right now. It is a good life, it brings me much joy, and great friendships.

And sometimes it brings me money. The book I speak of in the Facebook piece is “My Dog”, read it, and see how teachers may use it in the classroom here! It’s easy to see that dogs have played an important part of my writing life, as well as my ‘at home’ life. I love the way dogs fir into my words and my world so well, may it always be so!

section1My Books

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Creative Writing Exercise 2

carolyncordon

Sometimes a writer can spend so much time looking for what to write about, they forget to actually look at what is going on around them. There are battles, love stories, deaths, births, commitments, going on in the world, between people, creatures, in Nature, in your yard, where you work, where you play, everywhere.

If you write romance, for instance, have you ever caught a shy glance shared between work colleagues? That man serving at your usual cafe, does he always have a particular smile for one particular regular customer? These simple things can bring interest to your writing, real things happening in places you know so well, you can write about them so the reader can almost hear the phones ring in the office, or smell the coffee at the cafe.

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When you bring such things into your writing, you will be able to easily use the five senses, because you know what these things look like, sound like, smell like, taste like, and feel like, because they are a part of your life. The things you do almost every day, or especially every day, will become second nature to you, and you will be able to bring everything into how they fit into your writing, because the things are normal, natural, and also special, to you.

The way your front door key sticks if you are in a bad mood, so that getting inside after a bad day at work, making your mood even worse, or the way the same door can open with a fairy soft key twist after a great day at work, where you were praised for a job well done. These things can add much. So can the wind as it blows through the trees, sounding like perhaps the sea, or the way next door’s chickens sometimes sound so proud of themselves, it sounds like they’ve produce a dozen golden eggs, not just one ordinary brown or white one.

Everything that happens can, with adjustments, go into your current writing. Or if it is interesting, but doesn’t seem to fit with your current work in progress, write it into a  for such things. Sometimes when you have a moment later on, with the same work or a different one, your note may be just the perfect thing to show something, something true, and perfect.

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Real life brings reality to your fiction writing, to your poetry, and even to non fiction writing. Even unicorns can get nervous when a thunderstorm hits, flinching at crashing thunder, flashes of lightning, wildly thrown head with rapidly twitching ears, damp skin, shivering, cowering, trying to hiding away somewhere small and safe.

Write what you know, with the exciting addition of what you imagine, as well!

 

Writing

Which Story To Write?

carolyncordon

I have a friend, a member of my weekly writing group, who is working on, I think she said, ten novels at the same time. She is a dedicated writer, and I am so impressed by her output, in both quality and quantity. She writes historical fiction, and more contemporary fiction, as well as a smaller amount of non-fiction. I am in awe of her, I’m not sure is she realises that …

I can’t imagine having that many ‘works in progress’, going at the same time. I work at a crazy mixed up, slap-dash kind of pace, and feel unable to commit myself, and my concentrated time, in the same way as my friend. That being said though, I have managed to write and either publish, or have published, seven books since my first one, about fourteen years ago.

My most recently published book “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”, which I self-published last year, is the last in a series of three books, written in the point of view of a made up dog, Buster the Dog, and I don’t think I am going to write another book in that series. I feel like that book from last year said all I had to say. But the thing about books and writing, is that inspiration can come from a wide variety of places, so really, who knows?

At the moment though, I don’t feel at all committed to writing another “Buster the Dog” book, but Buster is always there somewhere in my head, so who knows. I keep my mind open to new ideas, always! I have other, more sensible ideas for stories that may become books though, and I am much more interested in those. One is a book for the 10-14 year old reader, and it involves, amongst other things, unicorns.

Unicorns have been in my life since I was around the same age as my imagined readers for this book, and I’m certainly excited about getting that book out. It’s a positive book, about a young girl growing up and learning about herself, what she is capable of, and how her life may be as she gets older. It is set in a district based in part on the region where I live, which is also the region of a made up place, I have set another book I’m currently working on.

This particular book is a novel, with intrigue, murder, politics, and is a bit of a love story. It is slowly creeping into existence, with me adding another paragraph or two every week. As I said, ‘slowly creeping’! I don’t know if I’m going to ever finish this one. I know it will need to be at least 65,000 pages, but at the moment, after a couple of years since I began it, there are perhaps 12,000 words.

With this book, I have paragraphs in notebooks, and devices all over the place, and I don’t know whether I’ll actually be able to even find everything I’ve already written of this book-in-progress. I think if I was really committed to this particular novel, I would have got far more organised with it by now, but haven’t really done much about it at all. I think that tells me the truth about it. I still have my main characters in my head, but not so much on the page. I suspect Meredith may never come out into the world …

I’ve enjoyed writing the snippets I’ve written in response to prompts from someone in my writing group, and I definitely feel that all writing is good practice. So, if that’s true, I’m not wasting my time with this novel-in-progress, I’m in fact learning more about how to write a novel, so that when a novel I feel I must write comes along, I will be ready to do it justice.

I hope anyone reading this has found it interesting, and I would love to read about your own writing process! Feel free to leave a comment here!