Why Exercise the Writing Muscle?

March 24, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 12 Comments

man holding barbell

Writing as a daily practice is a way to exercise the writing muscle. Like working out at the gym, the more you do it, the more results you get. Some days you just don’t feel like working out and you find a million reasons not to go to the gym or out for a jog, a walk, a swim, a bike ride, but you go anyway. You exercise whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around till you feel the urge to work out and have an overwhelming desire to go to the gym. It will never happen, especially if you haven’t been into health and fitness for a long time and you are pretty out of shape. But if you force yourself to exercise regularly, you’re telling your subconscious you are serious about this and it eventually releases its grip on your resistance. You just get on and do it. And in the middle of the work out, you’re actually enjoying it. You’ve felt the endorphins kick in. When you get to the end of the jog, the walk, the bike ride, the swim, the gym workout or the Pilates, Yoga or Zumba class, you don’t want it to end and you’re looking forward to the next time.

That’s how it is with writing too. Once you’ve got the flow happening, you wonder why it took you so long to turn up on the page. Bum on chair is what I used to say to my writing students. Through daily practice your writing does improve.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s book on discovering and recovering your creative self, she refers to daily writing practice as the morning pages. She recommends writing three pages of longhand, strictly stream-of-consciousness—moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind every day.

Author of Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg refers to writing practice as timed exercise. She says you might time yourself for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or longer. It’s up to you, but the aim is to capture first thoughts. “First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.”

Her rules for writing practice are:

1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don’t cross out.
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation , grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.

In Creative Journal Writing, author Stephanie Dowrick refers to the same process as free writing; writing without judging, comparing and censoring. “Continuing to write when you don’t know what’s coming next and especially when you feel your own resistances gathering in a mob to mock you.”

Daily writing practice has been described as clearing the driveway of snow before reaching the front door. In other words, it’s what we do as a warm up before the real writing takes place. And it’s a way to loosen up and discover our own unique writing ‘voice’. That’s what publishers are looking for when they read through the slush pile. The storyteller’s voice. The authentic writing voice of the author is what engages the reader.

What about you? Are you able to carve some time out each day to write?

Short pieces or a novel?

March 17, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 14 Comments

photo of a woman reading book

It’s hard to know sometimes whether to work on the short form or a continuous narrative. I’ve talked about this several times before because it’s a constant dilemma for me. However, the short form seems to be what I do best. Last year I tried very hard to write a genre fiction, but couldn’t get any traction on a story. Instead, I returned to the short form: short stories and prose poems. I am very very happy to say that one story and three poems have now been accepted for publication in Quadrant magazine. Phew! It is such a relief. The previous Literary Editor of Quadrant, poet Les Murray, retired at the end of 2018 and I worried if the new editors of poetry and fiction would like my work. Writing is so subjective. Thank goodness they do.

Have a read of what George Thomas, Deputy Editor of Quadrant writes about the new Literary Editor, Professor Barry Spurr:

The distinguished literary scholar and critic Barry Spurr is the new Literary Editor of Quadrant, succeeding Les Murray who retired at the end of last year after serving in the position since March 1990.

In 2011, Barry was appointed the first Professor of Poetry in Australia, and has long been a world authority on the life and work of T.S. Eliot. His book Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T.S. Eliot and Christianity (Lutterworth, Cambridge, 2010) is widely regarded as the authoritative study in the field.

In an academic career of more than forty years at the University of Sydney, including two stints at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Barry’s literary scholarship ranged from Early Modern literature to contemporary Australian poetry. He is a leading scholar in the fields of religious literature and liturgical language, most notably in the works of John Donne and T.S. Eliot, and the language, literature and music of the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

His contribution to Australian poetry education and criticism has been prolific, and includes a series of small books for students on individual Australian poets including Kenneth Slessor, Bruce Dawe, Judith Wright, Lee Cataldi, Peter Skrzynecki, Judith Beveridge, Robert Gray, John Tranter, Douglas Stewart, Rosemary Dobson, John Foulcher, as well as the novelist Christopher Koch. In 2007, he was elected Fellow of the Australian College of Educators for his “outstanding contribution to education”.

He has also been a notable public commentator, especially on the role of literature in the modern education system, and the role of the humanities in the modern university. He was the consultant on literature education to the Abbott government’s 2014 review of the national education curriculum chaired by Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire. Most of his recommendations were included in the final report, which supported “a greater emphasis on dealing with and introducing literature from the western literary canon, especially poetry.”

When he was appointed to his poetry chair by the University of Sydney, Les Murray publicly welcomed him with a letter of congratulations, saying: “It is rare to have a person interested in poetry as distinct from the furthering of what you might call Stasi-type criticism in Australia. In the last 30 years or more, poetry criticism has descended more and more into politics – and a really nasty form of politics.”

In 2016, after he left the University of Sydney, leading literary figures and former academic colleagues from both Sydney and Oxford gave him the festschrift The Free Mind: Essays and Poems in Honour of Barry Spurr (editor Catherine Runcie, publisher Edwin H. Lowe).

Barry has been a contributor to Quadrant since the 1980s. In his most recent piece in March 2018, a review of the collection of Ivan Head’s poetry The Magpie Sermons, he concluded on a severe yet positive note: “In our prosaic and crudely literal world, where just a word in jest in private can be stolen out of context and used to destroy a person’s career and reputation, and where thought, speech and expression are policed and pilloried (even, of all places, in universities), censoring and stifling the imagination, the voices of the poets, contrariwise, enlarging our vision of life and revealing the limitless capacity of language tellingly to communicate that generosity of spirit, have never been more necessary.”

I’m so grateful and blessed to have my work accepted by such a distinguished literary scholar.

Back Cover Book Blurb

March 10, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 7 Comments

painting of girl lying on beach in torquoise bikini reading a book

The back cover book blurb is crucially important. But it’s harder than you think to write one. My new book, STORIES FROM BONDI will be published by Ginninderra Press in July this year. It’s especially difficult for me to write a blurb for this book as it’s a collection of stories rather than a continuous narrative. We’re told the blurb should be short and sweet, give away enough of what’s inside the book without giving any plot spoilers and draw the reader in.

This is what I’ve put together using quotes about my work from well-known writers. Let me know what you think.

The characters who inhabit a Libby Sommer story live and breathe. In the sensitively-drawn details of their lives, in the echoes of the everyday, we find images of ourselves. As in her earlier collections, these 17 stories centre on women – their joys, doubts, loves and realisations – on what Sommer calls “the pain of the human condition”. She lays bare the foibles of human nature. From the opening story searching for the Bondi mermaids, to a moving piece set in a health retreat that closes the collection, this is classic Sommer, “brilliantly drawn with wit, compassion and poignancy …” – JAN CORNALL, Writer’s Journey

Last year, when THE USUAL STORY was nearing publication, I wrote a post about creating a great book blurb. That advice related to a continuous narrative, rather than a collection of stories, but some suggestions I made were:

‘A three-act structure. You want to catch the reader’s attention, give them the content, and then give them a reason to care.’ – Author Unlimited

Have a look at this YouTube video by international best-selling self-published Romance writer Alessandra Torre. She tells a terrific story of how she went from 3 book sales a day to thousands by changing her blurb: The Blurb Equation – How to Write a Kick-Butt Blurb.

The Blurb Equation (Alessandra Torre)

INTRO + HINT + CLIFFY

1. PART 1 INTRO: the characters or situation is introduced.

2. PART 2 THE HINT: what the story is about, the conflict or climax.

3. PART 3 THE CLIFFY: what’s going to happen? Hooks the reader.

Alessandra says to keep the blurb short. More than four paragraphs is too long . Three paragraphs of two to three sentences is best. Don’t give away the plot.

Hope you find this useful. Good luck on your writing journey.

Words to Use Instead of ‘Very’

March 3, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 8 Comments

Robin Williams standing on desk in front of classroom of boys

This is the advice Robin Williams had for his classroom of boys in Dead Poet’s Society:

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavour, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”

Here are some substitutes for the word ‘very’.

list of words to use instead of 'very'

Sound advice, methinks. Hope you find it useful. I know they teach all this stuff to us in Primary School, but it’s worth a reminder.

Facing the Blank Page

February 24, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 8 Comments

When I used to teach classes to beginning writers, it was good. It forced me to think back to the beginning to when I first put pen to paper. The thing is, every time we sit down and face the blank page, it’s the same. Every time we start a new piece of writing, we doubt that we can do it again. A new voyage with no map. As people say, it is like setting off towards the horizon, alone in a boat, and the only thing another person can do to help us, is to wave from the shore.

So when I used to teach a creative writing class, I had to tell them the story all over again and remember that this is the first time my students are hearing it. I had to start at the very beginning.

First up, there’s the pen on the page. You need this intimate relationship between the pen and the paper to get the flow of words happening. A fountain pen is best because the ink flows quickly. We think faster than we can write. It needs to be a “fat” pen to avoid RSI.

Consider, too, your notebook. It is important. The pen and paper are your basic tools, your equipment, and they need to be with you at all times. Choose a notebook that allows you plenty of space to write big and loose. A plain cheap thick spiral notepad is good.

After that comes the typing up on the computer and printing out a hard copy. It’s a right and left brain thing. You engage the right side of the brain, the creative side, when you put pen to paper, then bring in the left side, the analytic side, when you look at the print out. You can settle back comfortably with a drink (a cup of tea even) and read what you’ve written.

Then editing and rewriting.

Patrick White said that writing is really like shitting; and then, reading the letters of Pushkin a little later, he found Pushkin said exactly the same thing. Writing is something you have to get out of you.

Good luck on your creative journey. It’s a tough one. Hang in there and keep writing.

11 Tips: What Makes A Good Story?

February 17, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 11 Comments

portrait of girl wearing christmas hat

Everyone loves a good story. That’s the reason why so many people flock to the movies or spend hours reading novels – it’s because we love to get lost in a great tale. Here are 11 tips from the experts on how to write something fabulous.

1. Tension is the cornerstone of any good story. Eric Nylund

2. A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That’s what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself. Karen Thompson Walker

3. Be unpredictable, be real, be interesting. Tell a good story. James Dashner

4. A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. Raymond Chandler

5. A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart. Chuck Palahniuk

6. Tension is the cornerstone of any good story. Eric Nylund

7. No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside. Stephen King

8. My only conclusion about structure is that nothing works if you don’t have interesting characters and a good story to tell. Harold Ramis

9. I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story. Amy Hempel

10. I’m just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it’s random, they don’t see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an illusion that this is real. Eric Jerome Dickey

11. I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it. John Grisham

Hope you find these tips useful. For further reading, check out my posts 3 Parts to a Great Blurb and 10 Ideas for Writing Practice And to make sure not to miss anything from Libby Sommer Author you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

Where Do We Get Our Story Ideas?

February 10, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 7 Comments

girl learning person studying

“Talking is the first voice of a writer. I always heard it, I just didn’t know you could write it. I write the voices you hear every day—it’s just that people don’t recognize how wonderfully people talk. I think every time a person tells the truth, that person is speaking beautifully.” – Grace Paley

As a writer you’re probably always on red alert looking for story ideas. Maybe you use the world around you, seeking locations and characters and situations, listening in to conversations on buses or trains or in cafes. Changing your daily routine is a way to stimulate the imagination. Drive or walk to a different part of your suburb or home town and look for different places to write. Writing in cafes is my thing. Challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone in order to find new ideas. It helps to stay out of routine’s boring rut. I need to be physically comfortable and relaxed when I call on the muse. Early in my writing career, I wrote sitting up in bed. The ultimate cosy comfort zone. Now a comfy couch in a cafe is my preferred relax place. And when I sit in a cafe to write I always have a printout beside me of the previous day’s writing session. So I’m never staring at a blank page. Helps with the panic, What the hell will I write next?

There’s no better way to find out where to get our story ideas than by hearing from the experts. Check out some of my favorite authorial quotes below:

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”— Virginia Woolf

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”― Sylvia Plath

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott

“I want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way – what happens to somebody – but I want that ‘what happens’ to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‘what happens’ but the way everything happens.” –– Alice Munro

“If you haven’t got an idea, write a story anyway.” – William Campbell Gault

Some people keep a container filled with single words and draw out a word each day and write from it. That’s a good way to exercise the writing muscle and to get into the right (rather than left) side of the brain.

Good luck on your search for story ideas. I like to tell people I use anything that moves or makes a noise 🙂

For further reading, check out my posts Writing Tip: Don’t Forget to Pause and Writing Tip: Beating Resistance. And to make sure not to miss anything from Libby Sommer Author you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

Are First Lines That Important?

February 3, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 14 Comments

toddler reading book

Opening lines are the most important part of your story.

“There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It’s a tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don’t think conceptually while I work on a first draft — I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar. But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” – Stephen King

Some of the best opening lines in literature according to Tony Zeoli are:

1. The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

2. Gravity’s Rainbowby Thomas Pynchon

“A screaming comes across the sky.”

3. Cat’s Eyeby Margaret Atwood

“Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.”

4. Blue Nightsby Joan Didion

“In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue.”

5. Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury

“It was a pleasure to burn.”

6. David Copperfieldby Charles Dickens

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

7. The Book of Strange New Thingsby Michel Faber

“Forty minutes later he was up in the sky.”

8. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegasby Hunter S. Thompson

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

9. Middlesexby Jeffrey Eugenides

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

10. The Wavesby Virginia Woolf

“The sun had not yet risen.”

11. The Time Machineby H.G. Wells

“The time traveler (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.”

12. Lolitaby Vladimir Nabokov

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

13. Slaughterhouse-Fiveby Kurt Vonnegut

“All this happened, more or less.”

14. Sellevisionby Augusten Burroughs

“You exposed your penis on national television, Max.”

15. The Trialby Franz Kafka

“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

16. Anna Kareninaby Leo Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

17. Valley of the Dollsby Jacqueline Susann

“You’ve got to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls.”

Good luck!

For further reading, check out my posts Writing Tip: A Change of Pace and Writing Tip: To Plot Or Not To Plot. And to make sure not to miss anything from Libby Sommer Author you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

Why Use Deep Third Person Limited POV?

January 27, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 9 Comments

person holding silver retractable pen in white ruled book

Why use deep third person limited POV?

Because you can insert internal thoughts from the point-of-view character so the reader can get to know them better. In deep third, you don’t have to put her/his thoughts in first person and italicize them.

I like doing this because it allows me to get deeper inside my character’s head, showing more to the reader. You can bring emotion out in your character using deep third.

Author Ann Laurel Kopchick says, because a first person narrator/character knows that they’re telling a story to the reader. When you’re deep in limited third person, that character/narrator is unaware they are telling a story. The reader is reading the unfiltered thoughts, emotions, and feelings of that character.

Here’s an example of Deep POV from ‘Acting Married’ by Victorine E. Lieske:

She set the tray down on the server against the wall. Super. She’d messed up again. If her training had drilled anything into her head, it was that she was supposed to be invisible and never speak unless spoken to. Why couldn’t she do a simple job? She needed to give them the coffee and get out of there.

Have a read of How to Do Deep POV by Ann Laurel Kopchick.

Some of the topics she writes about include:

Don’t just report thoughts and feelings, descend into the character
Thoughts and perceptions should be that of the character
Use terminology, phrasing, syntax, grammar that the character uses
Avoid Filtering

Example with filtering: She saw the car swerve off the road and head straight for her. She dodged away. “God,” she thought, “I could have been killed!”

Example without filtering: In a hail of gravel, the car careered off the road and bore down. She threw herself to one side as hot air and metal whooshed passed. God, she could have been killed!

Good luck!

For further reading, check out my posts The Writing Process and Writing Tip: Turn Towards the Inner Critic. And to make sure not to miss anything from Libby Sommer Author you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

5 Tips for Choosing Images for Your Book Cover

January 20, 2019 ~ Libby Sommer ~ 9 Comments

My latest book, Stories From Bondi will be published by Ginninderra Press later this year. Because designing the book cover comes early in the production process, and authors have the opportunity to provide input on the design, I have been researching suitable images.

“Covers need to be both visually enticing and appropriate for a book’s content and audience.”

I often turn to Shuttlestock when looking for a cover pic or for advertising purposes. I did advertise my last book on Facebook recently. According to Help! My Facebook Ads Suck, it’s best not to use the book cover in the ad. Facebook don’t want your ad to look like an ad. Too many ad-looking posts are not good for Facebook business. So I create an image for each book that represents the story, but is not the cover image.

I’m using the above pic every time I refer to Stories From Bondi. It’s not the book cover.

This pic below is the image I use when referring to my last book, The Usual Story. I purchased copyright and use the image for my Facebook ads.

Regarding Facebook ads Marketing Secrets blog has some great advice. Have a read of ‘Confused By Facebook Marketing? Learn the Ins and Outs With These Handy Tips‘.

Some great recommendations on choosing a cover image for your book cover from Damonza cover design:

Choosing a photograph or illustration for your book’s cover can be a daunting task. No matter how imaginative writers can be, visual imagination is not always included. For many authors, the fact that an entire novel requires only one picture to illustrate it is a blessing. The problem is that you still need to come up with that one picture — and it needs to be a good one. Because it’s just one picture. One. The following are a few book cover design tips to help you formulate and execute a concept for your cover’s imagery.

1. Solidify Your Ideas

Is your book about the plight of a young waitress trying to make it in the cut-throat world of fine dining while juggling her love life? If so, an illustration of a moving truck is probably not your best option for a cover graphic. Think of elements from your story that would fit well in a background image. For the story of our struggling server, a photograph of an abandoned apron could be complimented by a matchbook with a suitor’s phone number scribbled in it. Focus on items or scenes that suggest your subject matter. If you’ve hit a roadblock for image ideas, consult with a designer. The pros handle images for a living and simply leave the words to you.

2. Be Aware of Legal Issues

You may be thrilled when you use Google Image Search to locate that perfect photo for your cover, but beware — licensing issues will probably prevent you from using it. You will need to find the copyright owner (usually the photographer) and acquire written permission to use the image. Some photographers will be happy you’re using their work, some will ask you to pay a fee, and a few will flat-out refuse to let you use their work. In some cases, you may not be able to track down the copyright holder at all. Be prepared for this scenario and have a back up plan. The last thing you want is to have your book ready to go to press, only to be held up by a legal battle over an image.

3. Browse Stock Photo Websites

If you’re really lacking in inspiration for your cover, there are hundreds of stock photo websites that have plenty of imagery available. Search for words that have something to do with your story and see what pops up. You may just find yourself flooded with ideas after seeing what the internet thinks! In the best case scenario, you may even find an image that you want to use for your cover. Stock photo websites sell conditional and exclusive licenses for every image on the site, so securing rights to use one will be a breeze. If you’ve chosen a designer to work with, talk to him or her about using stock photos. They can help you through the licensing process and anything else that gets complicated.

4. Take Your Own Photographs

If you’re looking for something with a little more of a personal touch, try to create your own image. Even cell phones these days have high resolution cameras that can take brilliant photos. There are also thousands of apps that can help you add filters and effects to the photo you’ve taken. When choosing to go this route, however, you must make sure that your photos are being taken in (and staying in) high resolution formats, otherwise they won’t be printable. If you have a photograph that you would like to use but you’re not sure if it will work, show it to your designer. Designers can apply filters and alter photos so that they look great on a book cover.

5. Work With a Professional Designer on your Book Cover Design Tips

No matter how you end up finding and selecting the images for the cover of your book, it is advisable to work with a professional designer to put everything together. They can help you choose fonts and colors that will compliment the imagery you’ve chosen and can even adjust the images you have to better suit a book cover.

For further reading, check out my posts Recharging Your Creative Batteries and Writing Tip: I Am Not the Stories I Tell. And to make sure not to miss anything from Libby Sommer Author you can follow me on Facebook or Instagram.