Dear Writer,

I’m so excited that Virginia O’Day popped by this week to answer some of your curlier questions about writing fiction! Virginia is the wise narrator of Dear Writer Revisited by Australian author Carmel Bird and the book is a brilliant guide for all wordsmiths — fledgling or experienced.

If you want inspiration, practical exercises or to know more about living the writer’s life, Bird’s book is invaluable. Its insights are drawn from her wide experience as a novelist, short story writer, editor and teacher, and you can buy it online now from Spineless Wonders. Several questions in this Q&A are from Spineless Wonders’ online book club (SWBC) — a great Facebook club, where members meet with authors to chat about their work — and I recommend you join it.

ABBW: The word courage appears more than 20 times in Dear Writer Revisited and is noted as the first (and at one point the only) essential for a writer. What can you recommend as the best ways for a writer to develop this courage?

Virginia O’Day (aka Carmel Bird): Here is my riff* on the matter. I don’t really have an answer to the question.

You write fiction by writing fiction. You develop the courage to do this by developing the courage to do it.

It is is no small thing to decide to dedicate long periods to writing stories. The decision disrupts not only your own life but also the lives of your family, friends, colleagues and so on. As soon as you decide to withdraw to the world of your imagination in order to construct small or large other worlds, you institute a change in all your relationships …

When you were learning to ride a bike, drive a car — how did you get the guts to do it? Was it by facing the fear, imagining the act, trying it out, failing, trying again, practising — and getting there?

Getting the courage to write stories is really not so very different, although in this case there might not be a close group of people cheering you on. In this case there are almost certain to be rejections — rather like failing your attempts to get your driver’s licence, actually. Only here, in the matter of writing fiction, the rules are never as clear as the rules of the road. There is so much freedom in writing.

Ah, freedom. That’s often the problem isn’t it? You come to a junction of seven roads. There are no signposts. You have to go somewhere — the decision is yours.

[*NB: Virginia’s/Carmel’s extended riff in answer to ABBW’s question can be found here and is well worth reading.]

ABBW: Can you please offer A Bigger Brighter World readers some wisdom about narrative arc? What should a short story writer aim for in terms of shape? How can they create and maintain tension? How do they know when it’s time to resolve and conclude?

Virginia: I love your name — A Bigger Brighter World.

As with so many of my responses to questions, I suggest you look at three of four of your favourite short stories and analyse their ‘narrative arc’. The shape, the tension, the resolution. The conclusion. I imagine they will all be pretty different.

In your own work, first there is the story you want to tell.

Then, how is the best way — in terms of shape and tension — to deliver it to your reader?

Sometimes it helps to make a detailed written account of just what this story is that you have decided to tell. This is not the writing of the story, you understand. This is the preliminary work.

Then look at it. Play with it.

Imagine you are telling the story out loud to someone.

Then write down that telling. Don’t do anything fancy to it.

I have so often found that students will tell a perfect story.

But then, when they go to commit it to paper, they lose the freshness, the flow – even the images, the language, the tension, the resolution. They forget how to communicate.

There is no set shape for a short story – you only have to read half a dozen great stories to see that. But the thing to remember really is that the story you are writing is something you wish to communicate as powerfully as possible to another person. Feel the presence of that person. The narrative arc and all the rest of it will take care of itself. You will know when you have got it all right.

ABBW: You recommend that writers keep a Reality Notebook in which they write down just three things each day and that this will ultimately offer them building blocks for creating fiction. In what ways does this Reality Notebook differ from the journals that Carmel Bird uses (and perhaps you use) to store inspiration, ideas, images and other material that will metamorphose into fiction? Why are such journals and notebooks so important in the creative process?

Virginia: The writer’s journal is a key tool in the writer’s toolbox. It stores up the treasures — new ideas or found objects — that the writer collects for future reference. Maybe it’s a bit like an embroiderer collecting a box full of lovely threads that will later be woven into pictures. And the memory can be faulty – you might have a terrific idea in the morning and by nightfall you might have forgotten what it was. So you write it down. (I wrote down a whole lot of things at an exhibition of Scottish/Australian history the other day — and then I lost the notebook. It happens.)

So that’s the usual writer’s journal.

What I call the Book of Three Good Things (or a Reality Notebook) is a bit different.

Every night you might just record three things from the day — three things that lift the spirit. It’s important for everyone, not only writers, to keep their spirits up. So much dark news crosses my path and yours every day. I need to remind myself every night that there were at least three lovely things in my day.

ABBW: ‘A good sentence is a human as well as a godly thing.’ This is such a lovely quote from Dear Writer Revisited. Can you please tell ABBW readers a little more about what you mean?

Virginia: Look at this quote from The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony by Hal Porter: ‘Sister Philomena gently agitating one black-gloved hand at a time. The gloves bear little scabs of super-human darning.’

Read it aloud. The rhythm is beautiful. And every word and every image leaps into your mind’s eye, bringing Sister Philomena alive for you. The picture is so simple, describing a nun’s glove, for goodness sake, but it belongs in the creative realm of a woman’s hand drawn by Leonardo.

You must go to your favourite books and find, write down, read out and treasure sentences in this category.

ABBW: In the introduction to Dear Writer Revisited, it says the writer’s voice and how this might never be found without pain. I struggle with finding, recognising and writing in my own voice — and particularly when what’s emerging on the page doesn’t really seem to sound like me or like what I thought I wanted to say. What advice can you give to help with this struggle?

Virginia: It doesn’t sound like you. And it doesn’t seem to say what you thought you wanted to say.

These are very common experiences for writers when they are beginning to move from producing work that is still rather flat, kind of held back. They are like swimmers who are still holding on to the floaty. You have to dare. You have to splash out with the words and ideas. You will make mistakes but gradually you will find you are saying what you really need to say and are saying it with a personality of its own (this might not be a personality you recognise as yours). Writing needs a signature (a voice, if you like) that calls to the reader, that makes the reader want to stop and listen. And no, it won’t necessarily be an easy task; you might have to work at it. The moment when you realise you are getting this personality in your writing is a moment of great joy. And you will never look back.

ABBW: Style is rhythm, you say in Dear Writer Revisited, but how do you know when the rhythm is right?

Virginia: Your ear and your heartbeat tell you this. I suggest you read aloud from several good writers such as Dylan Thomas, Charles Dickens, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, Penelope Fitzgerald, Patrick White, Thea Astley — and of course writers of your choice. You will, I am sure, find that the rhythms of the prose are wedded to the meanings. Then when you write, read your work aloud, I am sure you will find the rhythms you need. And practise writing then reading, writing then reading. In the end the writing will sing.

SWBC: Should I take my first steps with memoir or with fiction? Memoir seems accessible but scary and I am a very late starter.

Virginia: I think memoir is very demanding. 
What I really think works well is:
 Write some quick short pieces (exercises) of recollection — a way of finding 
out who you are and what are your strengths as a writer. A way of getting 
to know yourself as a writer, of establishing for yourself what your personality, if you like, is — as a writer.

This is not really ‘writing memoir’ in a big way. You are getting the feeling
of writing. Finding out how enjoyable it can be. (Painful too.)

Then start writing short pieces of fiction, maybe casting anecdotes in story form —building up place and character and plot — and discovering how to structure a story so that it will shine in the mind of a reader.

And remember to read a lot of the kind of writing you would like to be writing. Read it aloud. Read your own work aloud.

Write a little of something — memoir, fiction — every day (just about every day).

Go for it.

SWBC: What I struggle with especially is editing my own writing. Can you offer some examples of how to tighten/strengthen/edit your own or other people’s work?

Virginia: Write out the story in as short a form as possible (fifty words?)

1) Now, is there anything in your text that you could remove — or something you could add — 
or something you could move around?

2) Look for unnecessary repetitions of words (and even of images).

3) Are you using the passive voice when the active voice would be better? (Sometimes 
the passive is powerful — but not often).

4) How about adverbs and adjectives? Could you cut some out?

5) Could there be the odd really short sentence somewhere?

6) Do read it aloud and listen for the rhythm, the use of assonance — it can be good or bad — depending
 on what you are trying to do. Try to be objective with the listening — would you want to listen to this if somebody else had written it?

SWBC: What is your secret for writing truth into fiction? How much should you change before you risk losing the heart of it?

Virginia: Ah, well, there are no secrets — the only thing to do is to keep writing until you think you have got these things right. I know that sounds like a cop-out — but it is really the answer. And only the writer can know when the heart of the matter is being eroded. I think she might have to learn to trust herself more. There isn’t always a rule or an authority. This is delicate work and the author holds her own key, is in possession of her own ‘secret’.

SWBC: I have written about a particular incident from a number of characters’ points of view. For me this method mimics the myriad ways we each can interpret the same event — it’s more true to life. But people I have shown it to in my writing group say the reader doesn’t really get to empathise with any character in the story or to know which version to believe. What should I do?

Virginia: The telling of a story from multiple points of view is a rich and time-honoured way to layer the ‘truth’ of the matter. You have only to look at the novels of, say, Philip Hensher or, going back a bit, William Faulkner. I think you are on the right track here. And it’s not always wise to show work to a writing group you know. Maybe you don’t need that writing group? About ‘empathy’ with a character — this is more of a worry. Let me ask you — which character do you love most? Maybe that character needs some more work?

SWBC: I have recently found writing about what I know very tricky due to personal information I’ve shared within stories that has really hurt some family members. This was never my intention because I saw it as fiction and I embellished many parts. They ‘read’ into these representations and took it very badly! How do you conceal your truths within fiction? I write what I know and embellish it but I can’t escape the truths within!

Virginia: You have put your finger on one of the great dilemmas.

Memoir writers suffer from it in a big way.

But, as you say, fiction writers also find that they can upset and offend family members and friends, even when they are attempting to disguise and conceal the facts with which they are working.

I think there is no answer to this problem. It is something the writer has to negotiate — in the writing, in the family.

Once in a story I had a character who wore a scotty dog brooch with a little red stone for an eye. Everybody had one of those when I was a child. Yet, one day at a festival, a friend in the audience accused me of ‘stealing’ her brooch because my character had one/it.

On a happier note: When my father was dying my brother decided to read him a novel of mine. I was horrified because the novel was full of little references to old family ‘secrets’. What did he say? I asked my brother.  Oh — he said — doesn’t she have a wonderful imagination?

You just never, ever know how your work is going to be received. So I guess you just write it to the best of your ability — and see what happens.

SWBC: Life is full of millions of nodes, millions of layers, millions of intricacies, how does one sit down to write a true story without digressing and without overloading the narrative? How do you simplify a character or situation enough to represent it with the inadequate (cue Derridean thought) medium of language? How do you ‘show’ this complex thing we call life with words?

Virginia: This is such a wonderful question. You have identified one of the key problems of writers — maybe of all artists. Choice. It is, of course, a familiar problem of everyday life. Nodes, layers, intricacies. I love these words of yours. I am assuming for the moment that you are talking about writing fiction, although you do use the term ‘true story’.

I wonder where you (personally) start when you are writing a story. You sound very systematic.

Now there are many, many ways of coming at writing a character but the two ends of the spectrum, if you like, are:

1) make lots and lots of detailed notes before you start;

2) just let the character unfold as you write.

I imagine that the first option is closer to what you might like to do.

So maybe make all those notes, explore in writing some of those intricacies, nodes and layers.

But then, it seems to me, you would need to put the notes to one side — perhaps keep them in view — and move on to the second option — let the character unfold. The notes will inform what you write but need not be the substance of the writing. And some of the information will naturally surface and colour the character; some of it might disappear, apparently, but it will be there in your understanding of the character.

A writer is, I think, only setting out to ‘show’ a certain aspect of life as she sees or imagines it. Even the Scandinavian writer, Karl Ove Knausgaard, who is writing ‘every’ detail of everything in his autobiographical books, can’t actually be putting everything in can he?

SWBC: How does one achieve concision in a short story of 1,000 words without sacrificing depth, texture, and range?

Virginia: Stories of 1,000 words can be a delight to read.

I wonder if you have one to hand — one by a writer whose work you admire. If not, let’s pretend you have. I can almost certainly promise you that you will find the secret is in the language itself. Say there are two characters, one incident. Every verb and every noun will work to deliver your requirements of depth, texture and range. Really, they will.

And 1,000-word stories can be a pleasure to write. Promise.

A thing to try — you might not like it — but give it a go: Coldly invent two characters and invent situation, incident, plot, structure. Write all this up as quickly as you can (fifteen minutes — this is an exam) and tell yourself it will be 1,000 words. Then read it back to yourself, questioning every verb and noun. (You don’t need many adverbs or adjectives.) Wallow in the verbs and nouns and change some of them.

Just keep your eyes on every noun and verb. Do they stretch your imagination, tickle your fancy, take you by the hand and lead you along pathways strange and sweet? They do. Concision. No sacrifice.

Mind you, I’m not saying it’s easy.

___

To learn more about Carmel Bird’s extensive writing, editing and teaching expertise see www.carmelbird.com. Her blog of personal writing and reviews is www.carmel-bird.blogspot.com.

Dear Writer Revisited: The Classic Guide to Writing Fiction
Carmel Bird
Spineless Wonders
$24.99 (PB) and $4.99 (ebook)