Monday 16 June 2014

The Writing Process Blog Hop continued...


This blog tour/hop thing comes courtesy of the wonderful CristyBurne; the globetrotting, former garbage analyst and science circus performer who is probably best known for her fantastic Takeshita Demons series.

Cristy kindly tagged me to respond to the four burning questions that every half competent author is surely asking themselves each and every day.

So, here are my answers. 


What am I working on?
Right now I am surely just days away from completing what will certainly be the very last draft of the follow up to the Not Bog Standard short story collection,  whilst simultaneously embarking on an incredibly exciting new series of junior fiction novels so devilishly clever and addictively entertaining that if I told you a single detail about them here I would have no choice but to hunt you down and remove several of your body parts with a pencil until you swore on your favourite pet’s life to keep it a total secret.   So yes, that is a very long sentence and it’s definitely best I don’t say anymore.

How does my work differ from others in my genre?
Every author’s work is about seeing the world through their own filter and mine is mostly all about humour. I have it on good authority (everyone in my family, at least) that this part of my brain peaked at the developmental level of an immature twelve year old. But the adult part of me also occasionally likes to explore some serious issues too. Hopefully this mix makes for a mildly original take on kid’s fiction.

Why do I write what I write?
Because an idea gets stuck in my head and I have to write it down to make it go away.
Also because I enjoy doing it or at least I enjoy the act of having created something.
Mostly because someone else has already written Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.

How does my writing process work?
The answer to this question seems to vary quite a lot depending on time of day, what I ate last night and generally how I am feeling at any given moment.  In the past I have been at both ends of the scale and everywhere in between – In my anal retentive phase I spent hours spread sheeting everything, writing reams of notes, planning flow charts, character profiles and anything else I could think of to delay the inevitable attempt at anything creative. At other times I have simply launched into a project without any idea of where it is going from one paragraph to the next.

The truth is, both approaches have worked and both have also failed. I am still none the wiser as to the right way to do this except to say that I’m not sure it even matters as long as the idea is a good one and remains strong and authentic all the way through.  Just to bring you up to date, my main strategy just recently has been to try to avoid absolutely any form of procrastination (housework, personal hygiene, toilet breaks etc) and commit to writing as frequently and regularly as possible.

And now the handball...
 I have deftly passed the blog hop tour thing mantle onto fellow Readings Children’s Book prize shortlisted nominee, Penny Tangey.

Penny currently lives in Melbourne and when not pumping out highly acclaimed YA fiction she hangs out with a stuffed horse at Museum Victoria. In a previous life she also had a pretty good go at being a stand up comedian and on top of all that even had time to make a very interesting video about nappies.

So far she has authored three YA fiction novels, the latest being Stay Well Soon.  She is undoubtedly way more talented than me and already on the road to author stardom, which is why I am hoping she can at least say something sensible about her writing process that I might be able to steal for my own desperate purposes. Over to you Penny.