Nothing New Under The Sun

If you are a regular reader of this not-at-all regular blog, you will know that I've written before about my fascination with 'creative coincidences', the way in which writers will sometimes alight upon the same idea at the same time for no apparent reason, or a rash of books with similar themes or settings will appear within a short space of time.


Those original posts were prompted by my then-recent discovery that a book covering ground similar to my junior novel Surface Tension had just come out in the US. As is the way of these things, I've more recently discovered that another book with the same setting - of a town 'drowned' to make way for a reservoir - came out late last year in Canada. I became aware of this while idly Googling the phrase "The Town That Drowned", which was high on my list of possible titles for the US publication of Surface Tension, scheduled for later this year. Yes, that sound you hear is the gnashing of teeth. Yes, the title of the Canadian book, which looks absolutely gorgeous and has been shortlisted for a slew of awards, is The Town That Drowned. On a blog I read while surfing around gnashing my teeth, someone even commented that the 'drowned town' idea is 'becoming something of a theme in Canadian literature'.


My friends, you cannot escape the zeitgeist.


But that is not the reason for this post. The reason for this post is that something else has recently been drawn to my attention, and it is this:

It's a picture book, by US poet and author Kenn Nesbitt (illust. Troy Cummings). Here's the blurb from the publisher: 



Once upon a time there was a story. It was a lovely story with absolutely NO BEARS in it-not a SINGLE BEAR anywhere.


Then one day...MORE BEARS!


Yes, I know. This is more than a little eerie.


My picture book, No Bears, was published here in Australia in June 2011. More Bears! was published in the US in November 2010.


If you didn't know anything at all about the process by which a picture book comes to production, you might be forgiven for jumping up and down, finger pointed accusingly at me (though I'd like to think that before you did so, you might educate yourself a little about those processes, at which point you might perhaps lower your finger, stop jumping, and settle in to marvel at the utter weirdness of the synchronicities the idea soup throws out from time to time. I'm just saying. More calm investigation, fewer pitchforks. I recommend it.)


There is absolutely no way at all I could have read Nesbitt's book, written my own, had it contracted by a commercial publisher, illustrated, designed, typeset, published, in a six-month time span.


So yes, this is another example of 'creative coincidence', and it's particularly funny to me because the evolution of No Bears has been particularly replete with these.


Here's a brief summary, with timeline, for those who may still be considering picking up a pitchfork to storm my plagiarising castle:


mid-2008: I've just sent the draft of a duck story off to my editor. Ducks keep cropping up in everything I write. One day, in frustration, I type the words THERE ARE NO DUCKS IN THIS STORY! just to keep them at bay.


mid-2008, five seconds later: I go ooh. Because that seems like it might be the beginning of a story. A story about [no] ducks. I take a few notes and stow them away in a file.


later-2008-early-2009: I tinker with the idea, work up a draft, pitch the idea to some SCBWI buddies. They seem to like it. I rework the draft.


May 2009: I send a draft ms to my editor. It's called No Ducks in this Story!


May 2009, a few days later: At local library, thumbing through pbs. Come across Barbara Kanninen's A Story With Pictures. Come across the line "There are no ducks in this story!" Commence shallow breathing. Continue reading book and discover it is, thankfully, very different.


Jan 2010: Walker Books offer me a contract for the ms, but note that as the first duck book - Duck for a Day - is now forthcoming, it might be best to change the animal to something else - "Perhaps a bear? No Bears in this Book?" I ask whether it is too late to change Duck for a Day to Bear for a Brief Interlude and keep the [no] ducks in this story? I am only partly joking


Jan-Feb 2010: For a while, the ms is known as "No Somethings in this Story". In early Feb, I embrace the change to bears and redraft the story. It's called No Bears In This Book.


Later Feb 2010: Editor notes they are already publishing a book called There Are No Cats In This Book. We change title to No Bears.


Feb 2010-June 2011: Illustrations, tweaking of text, design, copyedit, proofs, etc.


November 2010: Somewhere on the other side of the world, Sourcebooks publishes Kenn Nesbitt's More Bears! Thankfully, I remain blissfully unaware.


June 2011: Somewhere on this side of the world, Walker Books publishes No Bears. Kenn Nesbitt, no doubt, remains blissfully unaware.


June 2011-present: Various well-meaning readers suggest that perhaps No Bears In This Book! might have been a better, more alliterative title. I am somehow able to remain calm in my response.


March 2012: Candlewick publishes No Bears in the US.


April 2012: Kenn Nesbitt and I become aware of each other's work and have a brief exchange which amounts to, "Fancy that!" and "I know!"

In closing, I will simply add that I would love to see these books duelling each other somewhere, somehow. More Bears! No Bears! That, I suspect, would be one seriously fun storytime.

VS

There's a Bear in There

Two bears, actually. On the CBCA Book of the Year Shortlist.

I was out when the announcements were made, and I'm not a smartphone kind of girl. So I found out via text message and slightly garbled phone calls (Frané Lessac, I'm looking at you!). First, someone told me that both Surface Tension and No Bears had made it onto the Notables list. I was thrilled by this.

Later, other texts started coming in. No Bears had made the Shortlist too. Wonderful. Amazing.

In two categories. Early Childhood and Picture Book. What?

I hadn't realised it had been Notable-d twice. I'm not sure I realised such a thing was possible.

Apparently it is. What a thing. And then to make it through onto the shortlist in both of them, in some amazing company. Sonya Hartnett. Bob Graham. Jackie French. Ron Brooks. And not to mention a certain dynamic duo from just down the road a bit.

I'm so thrilled. This year I couldn't help but know the announcement was coming, and be quietly hopeful. Mindful, of course, that there are so many good books out there, and many different ways in which the judging winds might blow. But hopeful, all the same.

The Shortlist isn't the only place my (no) bears have been turning up lately. With its recent release in the US, reviews have been coming in, and many have been making me smile very widely indeed. This is perhaps the subject of another post as there's some interesting food for thought in the possibilities some reviewers have seen in the text and I'd like to flesh some of that out a bit. But for now, enough perhaps to say that somehow, No Bears has managed to follow Duck for a Day and insinuate its way into the pages of The Wall Street Journal.

This is unexpected, amazing stuff, and I'm very grateful for all of it.

Poetry Week

Here beginneth the second in what appears to be a biennial series. It's my own personal poetry week, very much like the one I held back in February 2010. It's being held for exactly the same reason: I've been invited to guest at Perth Poetry Club and really need some new material to read.

But more than that, I really need to work on the hundreds of fragments that have been accumulating in notebooks and files for years, the many beginnings of poems that sit quietly, waiting for my attention.

In my quest to have some of them ready for this Saturday, when I'll be reading, I've identified a handful that look promising. I'm going to throw the (current) opening lines down here in order to hold myself accountable in a semi-public way. And also because I'm narcissistic like that. I did this last time, and it worked. And I'm all for whatever works, narcissism and all.

So, nine languishing first lines, plus one from a piece I scribbled at Coogee Beach yesterday:

Above, the poppet head sharpens/to a point, but it's down we're heading/my father and I

Well, look at you, Perth/with your new suit on

Dear Google Books/They say you've taken my words and turned them/into pixels

Seems we've found our way/to a new kind of science

The night we drowned the snails/I couldn't see my hands

The teacher says this and then/that and all the others/take it down

There's always someone plucked/from the crowd and so why not/her?

For so long I thought/I had invented breakfast, the very idea/of cereal

It's no country/for old men, not these at least

Down at Coogee, girls surf the beach/in unrelenting waves

Some possibly more promising that others, as is the way of things. But I'll hope to get 5-6 from this, and along with some older work, that should be enough for my slot.

Thanks, Perth Poetry Club for the kick-in-the-pants kind invitation. If things continue at this cracking pace, I may have enough for a new collection in another ten years or so...

If anyone is around this Saturday, March 10, and keen to hear some half-formed poetry, please do join me from 2pm at the Moon Cafe, 323 William St, Northbridge. I'll be sharing the bill with Annie Otness, and suspect her work will be decidedly more polished. There's also open mike, so get there early if you want to sign up for that.

Ducks On My Doorstep

I've posted before about how ducks seem to show up in my life at odd moments. When I finished the revisions for Duck for a Day, I woke up to discover a duck on my doorstep. And when I sent the manuscript of a follow-up to my editor, I had a visit from a mother and ducklings.

More recently, I've had a bevy of ducks arriving on my doorstep. Ducks of different kinds, but very welcome all the same.

I am delighted now to present to you Duck the First, being the Candlewick version of Duck for a Day, which has just been published in the US, and which kicked off its life over there by somehow managing to get itself reviewed in The Wall Street Journal. The jacket is slightly different to the Australian release but apart from that there are only minor changes to the text, something which might perhaps be the topic of a future post.

The main thing is that it's out, and people seem to be liking it, and that happily QUACK! appears to be an exclamation that knows no borders.

My copies of these arrived in an enormous box which had been opened and re-sealed by Customs (perhaps 'essence of duck' set their sniffer beagles on high alert). I didn't know they were coming, and it is always such a lovely surprise to find books in the mail. And even lovelier, somehow, to find them in hardback. This is something I hadn't really thought about. My picture books have been published in hardback, but all my novels have only been paperback, as is standard here, and there is something about the solidity of a little hardback Duck I found very satisfying indeed.

This first duck delivery was followed closely by another. First an email saying Yes, please. And then another, with an attachment, saying Sign here! And so I present to you Duck the Second, which is literally Duck the Second, being a publishing contract for the sequel to Duck for a Day, provisionally entitled Definitely No Ducks! (though it's been pointed out to me that this bears perhaps too much resemblance to another book I may have published rather recently...).

At this stage, we are aiming for a January 2013 publication, and the illustrator will of course be the marvellous Leila Rudge. I have some work to do on the manuscript between now and then, but don't yet know the size or shape of the job yet, so for now remain blissful and optimistic.

Which brings me, finally, to Duck the Third, this winsome fellow who has taken up permanent residence on what I call the Bookshelf of Narcissism. It's a shelf near my desk which houses mostly copies of my own books, though if you look closely you may recognise a couple of ring-ins.

Duck the Third came to me at the Perth Writers' Festival, where the lovely Karen Blair launched her debut book, Baby Animal Farm, to much fanfare and many barnyard noises. When I bought a copy at the bookstore, I was presented with this fluffy fellow. Buy a book, receive a duck. Now there's an idea I can get behind!

I am thinking of naming him Winsome Howell III, though I am not sure why. In any case, he will remain perched above and behind me, thereby bringing to life one of my favourite notions, that of anatidaephobia, the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.*

* TM Gary Larson, The Far Side

On Being Exhausted

So this appears to be the fourth in the three-part blog-a-palooza I embarked on recently with Sally Murphy and Anna Branford.

Yes, I am aware that makes no sense.

I'm adding this coda simply to say that although it was fun, I doubt I'll be doing something like that again. I have no idea how anyone keeps to a regular posting schedule and still manages to keep up with all the regular aspects of work and life and writing and all of that. Impossible.

I really enjoyed thinking about all those topics, and there's a satisfying discipline in committing to setting my thoughts in order for public consumption. But when writing time is at a premium, I'd rather be chipping away at stories than composing blog posts.

And it does seem as if writing time is at something of a premium this year. With the National Year of Reading thrown into the mix, I have a very busy schedule of school visits, festivals and residencies that spans the year, much of it involving travel - some local-ish, but others further afield.

This is all stimulating and fun. And time-consuming and taxing. I won't be taking anything else on this year.

Apart from the writing, that is. There are three books I want to write in 2012. Two are probably YA, and I'm about halfway through one of those. The other is junior fiction, middle-grade-ish.

There will be a chapter-book revision to complete later in the year, about which - watch this space for an announcement very soon.

There are three books coming out with Candlewick in the US which will require energy of one sort and another.

And picture books! There are many bubbling away under the surface, and it must surely be time for a new one soon. Just yesterday, at the Perth Writers Festival, an illustrator and I shared a moment in which we lit upon the same idea at the same time:

"What a great idea!" "We should do that together!" "Yes, we should!"

Ah, but when?

There are poems to be written, for a reading I'm doing at Perth Poetry Club in March. And also for my own creative sanity.

There are two books to be launched.

My website really needs a complete overhaul, about which I am in total avoidance mode.

There is one blog post to complete with the title "On Being Exhausted". One window of self-indulgence in which to say that I feel a little tired already just thinking about all this, but that I am lucky. Very lucky. And looking forward to it all, every last drop.

On Being Recognised

So this is the third in a three-part series I've been working on with Anna Branford and Sally Murphy.

I'm not entirely sure what approach the others are going to take to this topic. There are, of course, all sorts of ways of defining 'recognition'. There's the formal recognition of awards and the informal recognition of people such as peers and readers and random strangers at the shops.

Very early on in the scheme of things, I remember being full of excitement because someone had found my website on purpose, by searching for my name, rather than accidentally, via some variation on "goldfish + ponds" or "hydrocodone".

Once, I was doing laps at the local pool, complete with swimming cap and goggles, when I was stopped, mid-turn, by a lifeguard who wanted to know if I was "that writer-woman in the paper".

More recently, after writing a letter of complaint to a local business, I was asked during a follow-up phone call whether I was "the" Meg McKinlay, putting me in the unlikely position of having to say, "Define the."

These things are all recognition of a sort.

But I suspect that in writing about this, at some point each of us will home in on the formal awards, and in some ways it's a curious alignment that the three of us are doing this blogapalooza together because last year we were all shortlisted alongside one another in the Younger Readers category of the 2011 CBCA Book Awards.

Although this wasn't my first shortlisting, it felt quite different to the others. It felt bigger, as if my work had found its way to a broader stage. My earlier shortlistings – for the 2007 WA Premier's Book Awards and the 2008 WAYRBAs – felt closer to home, and in a certain sense that was true, as this was back when the WA PBA was only open to West Australian writers.

But the CBCA Awards feel like an entirely different beast to me. And I can honestly say that I had never once seen them as something I might be part of. I don't have a good reason for this, other than, I guess, the fact that none of my three earlier books had been acknowledged by them. Without really actively thinking about the awards – feeling neither anticipation nor disappointment nor much of anything else at all - I think I had somehow decided they had nothing to do with me.

Then all of a sudden, Duck for a Day was on the Notables list. Then all of another sudden, it was on the shortlist (because of the time difference, the gap between hearing the news of each was, for me here in WA, very short. By the time I turned my computer on, the Notables list had been up for a couple of hours and so the shortlist followed very soon after).

That day, I wrote a post about my response to the shortlisting, the vagaries of judging based on earlier experiences with poetry competitions and so on. I won't go over that ground again, but the post is here for anyone interested.

I'm not really sure what to add to that today, but I guess I might simply say that I'm very glad to have been shortlisted exactly when I was. I'm glad it didn't happen earlier, because that afforded me a healthy lack of expectation or even concern. And I'm glad it didn't happen later, because in some ways, it's given my profile a little kick that was very timely. Until Duck was shortlisted, I don't think I was really on anyone's radar much outside of WA. And yes, I know we live in a global village and all of that, but living and writing over here does make a difference and when this topic comes up, people from "Over East" almost invariably say, "Oh, but that doesn’t matter these days!" and people from "Over Here" nod and say, "Tell me about it."

But that's a whole other topic which I won't discuss here, except to make it very clear that I'm not on any level suggesting there is any bias – in the awards or elsewhere. All I'm really suggesting is that until something happens to push your head above the parapet, physical distance does have something to do with psychological distance, and it does matter.

I think that being shortlisted put me on the map in a couple of ways. It made people aware of my work in a general sense, and it collapsed the distance somewhat from here to there. I'm hopeful that momentum will carry through to a certain extent. I hope that when people see my name on a book, or in a festival program, they might be more likely to remember it now, to think, "That might be worth a look." I was very glad to have the recognition for Duck itself, and it opened up some wonderful opportunities for me – not the least of which was Tony Bones' wonderful musical theatre version of Duck for a Day, which toured during Book Week 2011 - but I guess I'm also hopeful that it will have a broader flow-on effect.

When I say that my shortlisting was 'timely', that's what I mean. It's timely for me now to have had this little kick, to have my name put in front of the industry in a more concrete way. For it to matter, I of course have to keep producing quality work. And I also have to accept that even if I do that, I might never be shortlisted again. As much as I'd like to pretend that I'm philosophical about that, the truth is that now I know that it's possible that such awards might have something to do with me, I'll find it impossible not to be hopeful. I am hopeful. I think hope is a good thing, a useful thing, as long as I'm aware that if those hopes don't come to fruition, it isn't necessarily a reflection on the quality of my work.

And if I feel a bit deflated and need a little ego-boost, I guess I can always console myself with a trip to the local pool.

On Being Edited

So this is the second post in the three-way blogapalooza I'm sharing with Anna Branford and Sally Murphy. Because it's part of a series, I've followed the same format for the title, but the first thing I should say is that I think it's misleading.

You don't 'get edited'. I've never 'been edited'. It's not a passive process in which the writer sits back and waits for the editor to tell them what needs to be done. It's a dialogue – a back-and-forth that begins with the text, moves to the editor, bounces back to the author, who returns to the text, then bounces it back to the editor, and so on thusly for the term of your natural life (or so it can seem).

When I show people the six-page editorial letter for Annabel, Again, or a marked up draft of Surface Tension I get some interesting reactions. Some people actually draw back in horror. But isn't it your story? How can you let them? From time to time I hear people - often aspiring writers - talking about the way publishers insist on 'changing' people's work, to shape it to fit their own set of parameters.

But really, that's not how it works. Or at least, it shouldn't be. If a publisher were to take this approach, I too would walk very quickly in the opposite direction.

My experience of 'being edited' has been that in every single case, my manuscript has emerged from the process as a stronger, more satisfying version of itself. Editors, in my experience, are the savvy, objective readers who guide your manuscript towards becoming the best version of what it is already trying to be, rather than steering it towards being any kind of version of something else.

The truth is, I love editing. I love everything about the process. I love taking the lump of clay (what we so often optimistically call 'the final draft') and seeing it get flattened and kneaded and hammered into shape (for more gratuitous pottery-writing metaphors, click here). Of course, I'm the one doing the flattening and the kneading and that's a confronting and difficult thing when you thought your beautiful sculpture was already finished, but it is also very satisfying when you have confidence in the process and the endpoint you're working toward.

I didn't always feel this way, though.

My first experience of being edited was something of a shock, actually. It was many moons ago when I was being mentored on a YA manuscript. This was really the first piece of fiction I'd ever written and I thought it was brilliant. It got me a mentorship and I thought I was on my way and many accolades were just around the corner (publication would happen first, of course, but I knew I had that in the bag).

Then I got the first part of the manuscript back from my mentor, a well-known YA author, and it looked like this:

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but I would estimate that close to 70% of it was highlighted in yellow. And when I uncovered the colour-coding key, cunningly buried a few pages into the manuscript, I discovered that yellow did not, in fact, mean, "Alert! Awesome writing!" but rather, "You could probably cut this bit."*

Going through that process unstitched me and then put me back together again. I learnt so much. I learnt not to be precious about what was on the page. I learnt that it was raw material, to be flattened and kneaded and slashed and burned and various other agrarian metaphors.

And I learned something else, too.

Because my mentor and I were very different writers. At one point, I began a chapter with the line, "A bomb went off at school today" and my mentor wrote, "Oh, thank Christ! Finally something is happening."

Unfortunately, he had commented before reading my next line, which read, "Oh, not really. That kind of thing only happens on Home and Away."

To be honest, my first reaction to his comment was, "I can't work with this guy. He seriously thought there might be an actual bomb? I don't write like that. I … I… I… mememe mybookmybook blahblahblah."

Then I took a step back. Because it wasn't about the bomb. I didn't need a bomb. And he wasn't really suggesting I did. What I needed was, exactly as he said, something to happen.

I had not actually realised that I'd written approximately 50 pages in which nothing at all happened outside of my character's head.

I'm not saying you can't write a story like that. Maybe you can. But at the very least, it needs to be a conscious choice. You need to know that you're doing it. And why.

That's part of what editing has done for me. It's helped me understand that when I write, I'm making choices. And that there are other choices, other possibilities; that the way things are is not the way they must be.

It's made me realise that I do have a voice, that what I think of as simply writing the story the way anyone would write it, is actually me writing the story the way only I would write it.

It's helped me own that a bit. To be aware of the choices I've made. To interrogate them and be open to alternatives. To defend them when necessary.

I would never have put a bomb in that story. And no editor would ever ask me to. But they would certainly point out that nothing had happened yet, and ask if that was what I had intended, and was I thinking about the consequences for the story, and my readers, and were there perhaps alternatives that might be considered? And yes, I know, Meg, that you want to write a 'quiet' story but there's 'quiet' and then there's dead, you know? Food for thought?

Food for thought, yes. Suggestions, possibilities, guidance. These are all part of the process. But no one tells you what to do. It's always your story. Editors know this. And what they are really good at doing is working out what the story is trying to do, and helping you find ways to do it better – in the context of your story, your style, your voice.

On a couple of my books, I've done what I thought were close to total rewrites during the editorial process, stripping them back and rebuilding them from the ground up. But when I put them back together, and sat back feeling satisfied with what I'd achieved, I realised that the seeds of everything that made the final version stronger were there in the first version, sleeping quietly. Waiting for a canny editor to come along and tease them out, to guide me towards them.

This in itself is a spooky art, I think, and I suppose all editors are different in terms of how much guidance they give, how directive they are. And perhaps that varies depending on how they read the author.

Personally, I don't like an editor to be too directive. I don't particularly want suggestions on how to fix things, possible directions the plot might take, and so on. I'd rather just have the problems laid bare, maybe get a nudge this way or that, but essentially find my way to the solutions myself.

At the same time, I recognise that's a bit of a tightrope for an editor to walk, and they can't know what my particular preferences are, so I try not to be too much of a delicate flower. If an editor says, hmm, what about this? and it seems like a sensible suggestion, I'll explore the idea. Even if the impetus comes from elsewhere (and doesn't everything, anyway?), I'm still going to make it my own in the writing of it.

Along the way there is much discussion. Debate. Disagreement. You can argue. You can fight. But it's not a battle of wills between two opposing sides. It's both of you fighting for what you think is best for the story.

I like to fight. And I'm kind of stubborn. I tend to think I know best. It's my story after all. But that's not what I meant! She just doesn't get it!

But here's a thought: If she doesn't get what I mean, maybe I'm not saying what I think I am. Maybe what I meant hasn't actually made it onto the page. Maybe I've got some revising to do?

I'm stubborn, but I've finally learned something very simple. I cannot see my own blind spots. They are, by definition, blind spots. I think I'm getting slightly better at avoiding certain things – 'being' edited feeds ideally back into self-editing, after all – but I still need my editor to thwack me every now and then and tell me to just stop it. Stop overwriting. Stop telling endless, quirky anecdotes that slow the pace at crucial moments. Stop circling and circling around the point and just explain what you mean. Sometimes exposition is good. TELL, DON’T SHOW!

And so on.

I've lamented my particular writing tics in other posts. If you're interested, you can read more here, here, and here. Did I mention I have a particular weakness for overwriting? For rambling? As demonstrated in all those places, and also here.

The final thing I'll say about editing is that I don't think it ever really ends. Even after a book is published, I'm still editing it, in a way. I'll change things as I read, to smooth them over, to shift emphasis. I'll wonder why on earth I did this and not that.

The French critic and poet Paul Valery once said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." That feels particularly true of poetry to me, but to a certain extent I think it applies to all writing. We shape and tighten and remix and unpick and rebuild and at some point we have to say enough! and then the binding goes on, setting everything in stone, and on we move to the next shiny thing.

And having said that, I have said more than enough and hereby abandon this post.

* If you're wondering what green means, it means "This bit is actually quite good." See those two-and-a-half lines in the middle there? That bit.