Blogs

We have just finished watching the excellent British TV series Broadchurch.  It dealt with rape but it was not preachy while showing how families were affected, girls especially. It turned out there were a series of rapes, most unreported because of the shame the women felt until the woman around whom the story was centred, reported her experience. She went through the horror that most rape victims experience….her past sexual history being dragged up, her behaviour which made many draw the conclusion she asked for it, and all the invasive examinations she had to endure.

My editor is my best friend and she is remarkable.

This is because when she is editing my work she is not bothered about how I might feel when she fixes my mistakes or points them out. These mistakes can be continuity problems, grammatical slip ups or any number of things I miss when I am in full creative flight.

So, in fact, she is my very best friend when she is not trying to be.

When my editor dispassionately points out my errors, she makes me look good to my readers. And that is what good friends do. They watch out for each other. She has my back!

One of the mistakes some writers make is to slip into telling the reader everything that’s going on in sweeping generalisations. A reader won't see what a writer is visualising until the writer describes the scene, character or action. Until then it is a blank.

All any reader can ever see is what the writer allows him or her to see and the only way the reader can do this is if the writer takes the time to describe it.

The Story Mint has just published its first Anthology of collaboratively written short stories. There are twelve stories written by 32 authors from eight countries. It is an amazing achievement and it is a world first.

We learnt a great deal from this experiment. However, it was so successful we intend to repeat it.

CHRISTMAS MAGIC

We have just released Everyone Has a Story, which is a set of short stories created from The Story Mint’s earliest serials. There are 12 stories, written by 32 authors from 8 countries and, as Kalli Deschamps says in her review, “The serials are well written with a beginning, middle and ending; complete as though written by one author.”

As writers we mix our experiences, associations and stories in a unique way. No-one else will tell a story like each of us does even if it is on the same topic.

While we were at the Melbourne Writers Festival I attended a session chaired by a successful Melbourne independent bookseller. He had two publishers, Henry Rosenbloom, founder of Scribe Publishers and still in business after 40 years, and Louise Ryan, Penguin Publishers on the panel. As can be expected they were asked what publishers look for in a manuscript. Both had the same answer. That answer made me sit bolt upright.

©

ORDER, ORDER, exclaimed the Leader of The House

Originating in the 15^th century, the exclamation point meant ‘Mark of Admiration.’ This has to be one of the most confusing and overused tools of grammar and for me, a ‘Mark of Frustration.’