Official website!

Last week, I finished setting up my official website for freelance editing. I'm pretty excited. I set up a custom domain name and fiddled around with the design template until I was happy with the way it looked. And now it's live! Check it out:

bonneecrawfordediting.com.au

I'm hoping other people like it as much as I do. Setting up this freelance gig has been a really healthy distraction from the terrible end to 2017, while I try to push myself back into a normal routine. In other words, I've put a lot of effort into this and I think it will pay off.

The most exciting part of all has been working with my first client. Her novella is amazing and we are having a great time fine-tuning the structure and content.

I'll keep things short and leave it at that for now. I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere is doing well with their writing, revising, editing, new years resolutions ... And whatever other goals you are currently pursuing.

Peace out!
- Bonnee.

A long way to the top

I've been pretty down the last few months (by which I mean, since 2017 began). Between toxic people in my life and the struggles of securing a job in the arts industry when you've just graduated, it's been a tough time. I've reached out for help, and kicked myself into gear to try to get out of the slump. Slowly, it's been working. I managed to remove some of the more toxic people from my day to day life and I started to find some validity in my job, even if it isn't in my preferred industry. But some bigger things needed to change, so I got thinking, and I've made some bigger decisions.

I chose to take a break from university. I withdrew from the one unit I was enrolled in a week before the census date so that it wouldn't affect my academic record. I can take this break for up to twelve months, but to be perfectly honest ... I have no intention of completing the Masters I am enrolled in. Although half of it was credited on account of my Honours degree, it was still going to take me two years to complete what was left at the pace I was going. Frankly, it seems to be a repeat of my undergrad, with perhaps a little extra detail and longer essays. In the long run, I don't think the stress or the student debt is worthwhile unless I'm taking away something more. After my twelve month intermission, I might do a course transfer into communications or marketing--IF I choose to continue study. Masters was never part of my plan, so I am not upset at the idea of dropping it altogether. It doesn't feel like quitting. It isn't. It just wasn't supposed to be from the start and maybe that's okay. I guess the only reason I didn't outright withdraw from the course was because I can still work on the student magazine as long as I keep my place in a course, even if I'm not enrolled in a unit.

I started teaching myself a little bit of design. I've never been able to get the hang of Adobe programs like Photoshop or InDesign, so I thought I'd try something a little more basic. I created a free account with Canva online and I've been experimenting with magazine designs using some of their pre-made templates and articles saved on my laptop from editing with WORDLY. Just for practice, of course, until I get the hang of it. One of my friends who is a bit of a designer herself gave me some really positive feedback on the attempt I showed her. We might start a little zine together, just for fun. I'm hoping that with a bit of practice using Canva, I'll be able to upgrade to InDesign and actually be able to include it as a skill on my resume; it's something a lot of the jobs I've been looking at want from their applicants.

I also intend to apply for an ABN (Australian Business Number) really soon, so that I can start freelance editing, and maybe freelance writing. I don't really know how that will go, considering how competitive and small the industry is in Australia. But hopefully, with a few testimonials and a domain name, I'll be able to get the idea off the ground. I know it's going to be an uphill battle, but I'd rather try and try and try than sit back and let myself be miserable at a call centre forever.

And of course, I need to start looking for a job in my field, at least until I can get freelancing to work for me (and I know there's no guarantee that will happen). Because, again, I have to try to make my dreams come true rather than sit back and let myself be miserable at a call centre forever.

Granted, the call centre isn't so bad when I put aside the fact that it's not the industry I did a degree to end up in, and I feel like I've gotten a really good grip on what I'm doing there recently. I've had a lot of good feedback from the members who call in, especially for cover reviews and hospital enquiries. Private health insurance is complicated, but I'm being told that I'm good at explaining how it all works and being thorough in the information I give. It still makes me feel pretty good when they take a moment to genuinely thank me at the end of a long call. It makes it worthwhile to endure all the people who call up just to yell at someone for no real reason ... I only wish the pay was a little more substantial.

How do you deal with the struggles of making it as a writer or editor? What decisions did you have to make to try and make things work? 

Inner Editor

In my current call centre job, I am not doing the things I wanted to be doing post-degree. But little editing things keep finding their way into my job. 

Last week, one of the girls was trying to find a customer's record and they told her they had a hyphenated surname. She placed them on hold and leaned over to ask me, 'Is this one a hyphen?'

She was using an apostrophe. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

When I showed her where the hyphen was on the keyboard, she said 'But that one is a dash!' I explained that hyphens are a type of dash and forced myself not to talk about en-dashes and em-dashes. Not everyone I interact with is an editor with extensive knowledge of punctuation standards, and that's okay. If it wasn't,  the job I am searching for would not exist.

The second thing at work I keep thinking about is how poorly worded some of our communications letters are. We keep getting confused customers ringing in because 'What do you mean I won't be covered after *insert date*?!' No, no, it just means that is when you are paid up until, you'll be covered after that as long as you pay your next bill. Sorry for the confusion. 

The new year at university kicks in this coming week and I am taking the editing unit online while I work. I guess I have made the right choice in doing that unit first, and hopefully I can get a job that utilises my editing skills properly sooner rather than later. 

How are you all going? 

- Bonnee.

Drafts from the past

Today I stumbled upon this annual opportunity with Text Publishing, The Tenth Annual Text Prize, which is taking submissions targeted at children and young adults until 3 February. I am not hopeful, but I thought it would provide some motivation for me to dust off an old manuscript and edit with a goal in mind. 

So I opened my NaNoWriMo project from 2013 for the first time since I last edited it in September 2014. And, yikes. Cringe. I've got a lot of work to do. I would like to think that my writing has come a long way since I first typed out WALLS, but I guess there's a chance I am still as terrible at writing now as I feel I was looking back at that manuscript. 

I am also still job-hunting like a headless chook and working on an academic paper that's due at the end of January, so in all honesty, it's very unlikely I will have edited all 85K+ words of WALLS to the point where I'd be happy to submit it anywhere by the early February deadline. At least I have made a start, and maybe this will get the ball rolling for me again properly. 

Happy New Year. What are you working on? 

Bonnee. 

Keeping it Tea-gether

My sister came down with tonsillitis last week and my immune system is doing everything it can to stop me from coming down with it too. I've been coughing and waking up with a sore throat since the weekend and producing more snot and phlegm than usual, but I have not let it knock me down. Hopefully I'm past the thick of it and will start feeling better soon.

I had a stroke of luck over the weekend and scored an interview for a content writing position. But in the end, I decided it wasn't for me—the recruiter was a self-publishing platform, and the deal-breaker for me was that there was no editing process. As an editor, I didn't feel comfortable signing up for that, so after a 45 minutes Skype interview I decided to withdraw.

I also decided to start writing a review of all the tea in my cupboard. Incredibly pretentious, I know, but I needed to write about something and thought it would be good for a bit of fun. I own 10 different types of tea at the moment and am constantly looking for more. I have a problem. Don't judge me.

Otherwise, this week has been mostly dedicated to working. Lots of working. I think it's dangerous for a writer to work in an academic library, especially at a university with a good writing and literature course. Even though my studies are over (for now), I still managed to come home with four library books about editing and literature in the past fortnight. Oh well.

How are your writerly lives going? 

Bonnee.

Out of Touch

In the past year, I've done a whole lot less creative writing than I'd like to admit. Between writing my Honours thesis, staying on top of the coursework, moving houses, editing for the student magazine, and working, I've barely had spare time to write. Not to mention enough energy. I have legitimately been wishing for days to have more than 24 hours in them over the past year. 

I'm hoping this lack of time to write will be alleviated now that uni is over. I've now handed in my thesis and my final essay, so the coursework is done. I'm tying up loose ends with the student magazine before I part ways with it (so emotional), which means I'm not going to have anything to do in the way of editing, except where my own work is concerned. 

My job at the library is continuing on a casual basis, which is nice. I enjoy working there. My dilemma at the moment is whether to look for some casual/part-time editing work to fit around it, or to spend that extra time on my own projects, at least for a little while. Both, would be nice, but perhaps not with immediacy. It would be nice to relax and have a little time for myself, though I definitely don't want to be away from the editing scene for too long. Let's face it—that's where my heart is on the professional side of the coin.

Most of the writing I've produced this year has been academic, and I am damn proud of the thesis I produced. I'm not done with academia just yet, but I'll elaborate on that in another post. Aside from essays and a thesis, most of the rest of my writing this year has been articles and nonfiction. Most of it is also under a pseudonym. There was one exception to all the non-creative writing very early in the year, where I stayed up til 3AM to crank out a short story that wouldn't get out of my head. I was proud of it, redrafted it a couple of times and submitted it to a lit journal who rejected it and got back to me with some really good constructive feedback that I'm hoping to use to redraft again. But I miss working on long-form fiction. I want to get back to revising WALLS or one of the other manuscripts I finished back in high school. Maybe my head is clear enough now.

How do you get back into the swing of things? 

Bonnee. 

The End.

It's been nearly five months since I last posted something here. Admittedly, I'm a little disappointed with myself, although I know I shouldn't be. I've had a lot going on this year.

As well as being a full-time uni student in the final year of my undergraduate adventure, I was one of four editors producing Verandah, Deakin's annual literary journal. It was an amazing success, if I do say so myself. The launch was back in August. Wow, that was ages ago. It feels like it was last week. As editor-in-chief of the student magazine, I've also produced five editions of WORDLY, and continued to run the Deakin Writers Club which produces it.

All the while, I've continued working my jobs at the Library so that I can pay rent and bills. And save up for a new car. Because I crashed my car and they decided it was too old to be worth repairing, so they sent it to the wreckers. That was at the end of semester 1. It was like the crescendo, after which things finally calmed down, but they couldn't calm down until that happened. Semester 1 was rough with all of the commitments piling on top of each other, my boyfriend moving interstate for an internship at the end of the semester, and a bunch of personal stuff that I'm not going to go into here except to say that I was not in a good head-space for a long time there.

I hit rock bottom that day when I crashed; it really hadn't been a good day and I'm just glad no one was hurt, even if I lost my car. This second half of the year has been a hell of a lot better. I've still had my bad days. I've had some really fucking bad days. But even on my bad days, I know the feelings will pass, I'll move forward, I'll keep feeling better. I've got friends who will help me through anything and I know that it's okay to call the day off and let myself take a break when I need one without feeling endlessly guilty. This year was the first time I'd ever asked for an extension for an assignment. I haven't gotten as many this semester as I did in semester 1, but it's been good to know that the option to get a little extra time is there and that my teachers are, for the most part, understanding and compassionate people.

I still haven't gotten back into the swing of writing, but I think it's safe to say I'm past the major writers block that had me in its clutches earlier in the year. I'm planning to do NaNoWriMo next month. I'm finishing the major creative assignment I have for one of my subjects at uni, which is due this coming Friday. I'm preparing my Honours application, which I'll hopefully have submitting within the next fortnight. I've finished all my undergraduate classes and now I just have assignments to go and that's both exciting and terrifying and I'm happy with everything I have achieved despite the shitty year, but I'm also really sad to be leaving. I have a few close friends doing Honours with me, but there'll be people missing here and there. It won't be the same. But we're all going to be amazing.

So I'm not really sure what I wanted to tell you guys with this blog post other than justify why I hadn't been around for a few months and apologise and promise that I'll be back around again soon, although probably not as frequently as I used to be. But definitely more frequent than every five months! I'll be visiting the people I usually follow on their blogs soon, so if that's you, expect a comment from me in the next few weeks when I've finished drowning in assignments and can officially say that I'm free.

Lots of love (I have sincerely missed blogging and the people of the blogosphere).
Bonnee.

I Miss Writing

Whoa, this whole blogging thing still isn't going well for me. It's been more than a month since my last blog post. What have I been up to since then? Not much in the writerly sense of things. My last post was before O'Week at my uni. I just about worked myself to death that week. But running the stall for the Deakin Writers Club was amazing. We got heaps of sign ups and handed out a lot of the O'Week edition of WORDLY. Speaking of: check it out online! We're having some trouble with this online version though--it seems that a few (really good!) pieces towards the end have disappeared for some viewers (though strangely not all) and we aren't sure why this is, and try as we might we haven't been able to fix it, which has been frustrating. But still, look at it! LOOK AT IT! IT'S SO PRETTY! 

I've managed to get together a couple of Deakin Writers Club events. Our first one was 'Lit-Mag Madness!' a couple of weeks into the Trimester, and it went really well! Especially considering I was winging it ... I organised it really last minute, and didn't put out notice for it until three days before it was scheduled ... somehow still ended up with thirty-ish people! It was great. One of the other Deakin Writers executives and I brought along our collection of literary magazines to show off and the whole point of the event was to show the members that there was an abundance of opportunities for them to get their work out there--they just had to know where to look. So I sat there talking at them for 5-10 minutes, just explaining some of the main ones we were showing off ... and then I decided they had to eat the food I brought them and socialise, so I told them to stand up, move around, talk to people and read some lit mags. Never in my life did I think it would work. I think the other executive's threat of making them play an awkward icebreaker game if they didn't start socialising might have given them that extra push, but still! Nek minet, all the writers socialising and talking! It was beautiful! Anyway, it was really fun and I talked to heaps of the members and I think people had a good time--at the very least, they enjoyed the free food, and the TimTams were the first thing to go, so I'll need to bring more of them next time.

I suppose I'll share here a couple of the things I showed the members at the event. First, there's this one page on the Australian Society of Authors website with a list of Australian journals and magazines they could submit to, and links to their information pages: Journals and Magazines.

I also shamelessly advertised Verandah Journal, which is the other magazine I'm on the editing team for, and you guys can submit to this one too, so check it out!

And then one of my lovely editors suggested we should put on a bit of writer-relevant music, which I can't remember whether or not I've shared here before, but here it is anyway. I quite enjoyed it:

That aside, I managed to get another event underway. Deakin Writers joined forces with Deakin TV club to host a script writing class, which we'll be following up with a script writing workshop after the Easter break. The only problem was that when I agreed with the DTV executive team on a date, I didn't have my week planner on me (because I'm an idiot who constantly leaves it at home), so I was relying on the fact that I know my class timetable off by heart and my work rosters get emailed to me. What I didn't take into account was that I'd been given an extra shift after the rosters came out, so a couple of days before the event, I looked at my week planner and realised I was working at the same time this script writing workshop was meant to be happening. Very devastating. We were able to continue running it even though I wasn't going to be there, but I felt so bad for suddenly ditching the team! Note to self: bring week planner, ALWAYS! 

Luckily for me, there was leftover pizza from the event, and the other Deakin Writers executive who worked on the event was waiting for me after work with a box. What a gem. Bloody legend. She even saved me some garlic bread. This is friendship. 

I've done no writing or editing for myself since before the summer holidays end, which I hope to rectify shortly, as we are going on our mid-trimester break next week. I still have work and I still have assignments, but hopefully I'll find time to get something written for the next edition of WORDLY. The theme is 'Freedom of Expression' and I'm really looking forward to all of it because we're working in partnership with Querelle, which is being published by Deakin students this year too! While the Querelle audience will be the queer-identifying community, WORDLY's will be broader, but we're sharing the same theme and the idea is to create some hype for them, especially among the Deakin students. They're great to work with, especially considering half of their editorial committee are either current or previous WORDLY editors, so we already know each other and find it easy to communicate. I'm hoping to contribute to Querelle this year as well, but first I must figure out what to write and then I must find time to write it! HOPEFULLY THESE TWO THINGS WILL HAPPEN THIS WEEK!

In other news, I'm not going to bother touching WALLS until the mid-year break. I don't have time to work consistently on any large projects at the moment and frankly I might actually die if I try to do anymore work at this point (and I haven't even CONSIDERED my assignments yet!). My plan for mid-year break is to dedicate every spare moment I have to editing and rewriting WALLS and then I'll be seeking a beta reader or two (probably people from my course at uni) to look at it over Trimester 2. If all goes according to plan, hopefully they'll have finished looking at it for me by the end of T2 and then I'll have the summer to incorporate whatever edits and suggestions they make and then I'll be able to consider what the next step I'm going to take is. Hopefully, the next step will be sending it to a professional of some description: either a professional manuscript evaluation person from Writers Victoria, or to a literary agent, depending on where I feel the novel is at. And of course, I'll be attempting to do NaNoWriMo again come November. I know that's quite a while ahead, but looking ahead to where I want to be is the only way for me to get through the slush-pile of work and study that I'm stuck in right now. I miss writing and I know I can't make sufficient time for it until then, so I'll patiently look forward to it instead. 

That's all for now. I'll try to be a little more blog-active over the next week for mid-trimester break. Happy Easter to those who celebrate it and Happy International Chocolate Indulgence Day to everybody else. :) 

What are you working on? 

Bonnee. 

You: What have you been up to? Me: A lot.

Whoa, it's been quite a while! I haven't blogged since the very start of December and a lot has happened since then!

'What constitutes a lot?' you may ask.

Well, for starters, I was suddenly thrown into full-time work in December, which was a good experience both for my resume and my bank account. The best part of this was that it was editing--yay for industry experience! The not-so-great part of it was staring at an Excel spreadsheet for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This job was, you guessed it, through the uni, just like all my other jobs, because for one reason or another, apparently I'm super employable. What was I editing? Deakin University has teamed up with IBM to develop this thing called Watson, which is basically this program that we have taught to answer Deakin-related questions by getting all all the cohorts in the university to compile a list of questions they get (in all the different ways they can be asked) and then making a whole bunch of answers. So I was first of all helping the customer service team answer their questions and then spent a couple of weeks after that helping to make sure all the answers from everywhere were written properly and in a certain way. This program has now been launched so that new students can use it to get information about Deakin.

So I was doing that until just before Christmas, and then a couple of days before Christmas, my best friend from high school and I went for a bit of a road-trip. Well, two hours isn't that far to travel, but the point is we drove from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne to Torquay for an afternoon and slept in a tent for two nights. Our adventures while we were in Torquay included eating fish and chips on the beach, taking many silly photos, having very meaningful conversations, cooking breakfast on her little camp stove, going to a spa and getting massages, meeting up with an old high school teacher who had moved to Torquay very suddenly a few years earlier, before we graduated, eating a lot of cheese (we have a severe addiction to brie) and watching The Fault In Our Stars on her laptop. It was a lovely and much needed vacation!

Then Christmas happened. Nuff said. I put on about seven kilos and I'm still working on putting them back off (pants, plz, fit me!). But seriously, Christmas for me is just binge-eating with family. And I have to spend it with two families, so that's two very big meals in one day. Worth it. For Christmas, I got a GPS, which will come in handy next time I try to find my high school friend's house (I've driven to her house twice now and gotten lost both times). I also decided to get the piercing at the top of my ear redone, after it got infected and closed up a few years ago. So far, no infection. I've been taking extra good care of it and I've decided that if there's no sign of an infection after three months, I'm getting another three piercings. Going for the Winry Rockbell look (any FMA fans out there?).

And what's my excuse for not blogging after Christmas? I have been a headless chook. That's my excuse. I took on a big part of the administrative role in the Verandah Journal team of editors, including secretary, which leaves me writing agendas and taking the minutes for all the team meetings, as well as helping send out emails to potential sponsors and organising the stall we'll be selling our back-issues at (and promoting submissions for the new edition) during Orientation Week at Deakin. The latter task has proved to be quite difficult and stressful.

(Intermission ... for the Attack on Titan fans in my life) 

On top of that, I've been producing the O'Week edition of the student magazine WORDLY. Seeing as the entire production team is on summer holidays and people are travelling or taking summer classes or working a lot, on top of the fact that this is probably the hardest edition to get people to submit to because most are too busy soaking up the summer sun to write for us, this one has been a hard one to pull together. This is also the first edition where I am officially editor-in-chief and production manager without last year's team right there for back-up (although they did still give us a hand when we asked, because they're awesome). So we've had a lot of tight deadlines to meet this edition, but now we've sent the file to the printer and we'll be receiving our boxes full of WORDLYs on Friday, right on time for O'Week next week.

And then, with WORDLY comes the Deakin Writers Club. Actually, it's the other way around. WORDLY is brought to you by Deakin Writers. But basically, there's been executive team training and organising an O'Week stall (yes, I've organised two O'Week stalls and I will work shifts on both of them). Organising this stall wasn't half as troublesome as organising the Verandah stall--it was basically given to us, because we're a DUSA club. I just had to fill out a form. The stressful part about the Deakin Writers O'Week stuff is putting together membership sign-up packages. These are intended mostly for new members, and contain a back-issue or two from last year as well as the new edition. We're also hoping to include some flyers and stuff from a few Melbourne-based writerly organisations, namely the Emerging Writers' Festival. I'm even making a trip to The Wheeler Centre tomorrow to pick them up from their head office.

I'm also working in the Library one day every week in a permanent position for the year, covering for one of the full-timers there who's returning to study. Once Trimester 1 starts up, I'll also be back in the swing of my Student Rover job. I'll also be back to classes and studying and essay-writing. No creative writing units this Trimester; I've got three philosophy units and a children's literature unit, but I'm sure this Trimester will still be great! Except the Timetable Gods are vengeful--as punishment for managing to fit all of my classes into one day last Trimester of last year, this year I've been forced to spread them over four days. It's still a measly eight hours of class all together, two on each of the days I have to go in. I don't have class on Wednesdays. I do have class on Fridays. In fact, one of my classes was only available on Fridays, which was especially unfortunate for me, because Fridays is the day I'm always rostered on in the library. In order to keep this position, I had to put my hand up for the early shift. So, I'm really NOT a morning person, and I thought starting work at 9AM and working through until 5PM wasn't fantastic ... but the early shift, once Trimester 1 starts, means I start work at 7:30AM and work through until 3PM, at which point I race off to a philosophy seminar for two hours before going home. The shift is actually meant to go until 3:30, but the last half hour is meant for checking emails, making sure everything you were meant to do is done, tidying your desk, submitting your timesheet, etc ... so I spoke to my manager about it and basically I just get half an hour less pay, but that's alright with me if it means I don't have to skip class. Yes, I'm a nerd, what of it?

What else? I've been editing a friend's manuscript on and off. I'm about 50 pages in. It's quite an enjoyable read, when I've actually got time. It's children's literature and I think he's got a really great voice going for him, at least with this particular story. I wish I could read it faster for him. He actually gave it to me back in September and I just never got around to it until New Year rolled around. Hopefully I'll give it back to him this Trimester at uni. I've done bugger-all of my own writing or editing--WALLS has been completely neglected. It is literally a pile of pages hiding underneath my bed right now. I wrote a feature spread for the O'Week edition of WORDLY and worked with one of the other editors on it, but aside from than, no new material out of me. One of my friends at uni was involved in organising and running the Digital Writers' Festival and asked me to promote them a little, so I managed to 'attend' some of their events (online) and Tweet about them from the @DeakinWriters and @WORDLYMagazine accounts. My boyfriend and I started hiking together. We've gone four times this month for about two hours each time. I've started swimming laps again, which is something I haven't done since early high school. And just generally, I've been keeping up my social appearances with friends where I can. Even though I haven't done any writing for myself, I've got a lot of stuff I'd like to write in my head, from children's literature analyses about Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (OMG DID ANYONE SEE THE FINALE OF KORRA OMG I WAS SO HAPPY), to another YA dystopia/post-apocalyptic/borderline science-fiction story idea I'd like to try and execute.

(How I'm feeling now ... except I don't think I'm quite that cute.) 

Source

My boyfriend was meant to move to South Australia for an internship last month, but that's been delayed for about six months, so we're living together. It's kinda sad, I just want him to hurry up and go so that he can hurry up and come back. I also preemptively took on a lot of work (see everything I've listed above) so that I'd be able to keep myself busy while he was gone and make it easier to deal with, but now that he isn't going, I feel like I've taken on too much. The busiest part of it (particularly the production of Verandah Journal) will all be over before he leaves. I suppose I've got to grin and bare it, though. When I make a commitment, I stick to it, and a lot of these aren't commitments I can back out of easily ... I just need to make sure I don't accidentally get given any more jobs, or I'll have seriously screwed myself over. I feel a little overwhelmed at the moment, but I know it's just a matter of getting used to, taking a deep breath and realising none of it is that hard. I just have to be organised and stay on top of everything. I say that now, but let's see how I actually manage everything as this first Trimester of uni gets started.

Well, this post has been long and rambly. It's 11:30 at night over here and I want to be at The Wheeler Centre pretty early tomorrow morning, so I'm going to throw in the towel now and hopefully I'll pick it up and write another blog post before several months have slipped away in silence.

I apologise for any typos or grammatical errors. I am too sleepy for that kind of coherency.

What's everyone else been up to?
Bonnee.

Writer's update: long time, no see

That moment when it's November and you realise you haven't blogged since August ... woops. I'm still alive, I swear! Well then, what the heck have I been doing? Yes, I've been asking myself this question quite a bit as well. And turns out, I've actually been up to a lot more than I realised.

Well first of all, I got a second job. Still at the university library, but a bit different to my job as a Student Rover. Throughout September, I was working 9-5 usually 2 or 3 days a week doing some writing and communications stuff for the head librarian. So that was pretty cool. I now have an access card to the staff only area and for a little while there I had a desk pretty close to all the offices of important library people. Then the head librarian was running out of time to give me stuff to do, so she got the service desk people to train me so that I can do all of that stuff too, so I've had a couple of shifts doing that in October. Now I'm finished with my second year of uni, so work at the library is a little slow. The Student Rover program won't run again until March next year, but in the meantime I'll still get the odd shift on the service desk during the summer teaching period.

But in between all that work in September and early October I was also still going to uni for eight hours on Mondays, meeting with the WORDLY production team on Wednesdays, and working on assignments. Well, actually, I kind of left all my assignments until the week before they were due, so in the space of one week I cranked out 3 essays ... and two of them were philosophy essays, so that made my thinker-box hurt quite a bit and I was filled with regret.

But before my assignments were all due, I was working both in the library and on the final edition of WORDLY for 2014 and I've got to say I am quite proud of what we produced for the Writers Club. We launched the final edition at the end of September and accompanied the launch with an open-mic spoken word event, and the Deakin Writers Club annual general meeting, where the new executive committee for the club and the magazine was elected. So, I am now production manager of WORDLY magazine and president of the Deakin Writers Club for 2015 and pretty excited about it. I have great faith in the rest of the executive team and I think we're going to work really well together to make 2015 an awesome year for all things writerly at Deakin.

So yeah, after all that and writing my assignments, I bummed around res for a couple of weeks while all my housemates suffered through exams (mwahahahahahaha suckers) and watched a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra with various people because it's amazing. I went on a bit of a holiday with two of my best writerly friends, Watson and Holmes, and we did nerdy writerly things for a weekend and a bit. Then I got all of my marks back and I was pretty happy with them. It was a good trimester at uni, overall. Then I went back to my hometown for a little and managed to get my probationary drivers licence, drove back up to uni, and moved all my stuff off res because it was that time of year again. It was very sad saying goodbye to all of my housemates and other ressie friends, especially the ones I've known since my first year on res. It was sad saying goodbye to res in general, because it's been my home for two years now and such an amazing place. I'll miss it dearly, but the lease was over and it was time to move to another dwelling. I haven't moved far from the university, so I'll still be able to get in to go to work pretty easily.

And last of all, it's November! Which mean I've started NaNoWriMo again. This year, I'm taking the idea I used for my fiction piece in trimester 1 and turning it into a full-length novel. I don't think I'm doing a particularly fantastic job of it thus far, but hey, what are first drafts for if not for making an absolute mess of a great idea? But what happened to my project from last year, the one I blue-tacked all to my bedroom wall on res? Well, I had to take it down when I moved out, but I did finish the first round of edits a little while ago now. Last month, I finally started transferring those edits to the document on my computer. After NaNoWriMo this year, I'll be spending most of the summer editing that, along with the work of another friend which he gave to me back in September. I've been intending to write a story sins blog post about WALLS, but I guess that'll have to wait for a little while longer. For now, lets see if being on summer holidays can get me back into the swing of blogging.

Where have your writerly ventures taken you these past few months?
Bonnee.

Back to Uni

Whoa, so I disappeared off the face of the blogosphere for more than a month... oops.

I'm back at uni now. In fact, I'm in the second week of the new trimester. Yay! I missed uni and res a lot, so I'm not sure how I managed to go the ENTIRE mid-year break without blogging excessively... But that happened.

So here's what you need to know:

1. I only have eight hours of classes per week this year. And I fit all of those classes into one day. In other words, I only have eleven days of class for the entire trimester (trimester=11 weeks). It also means I have a six day weekend as far as classes go. This is good because I now have optimum availability to work at the library as I am available for all of the shifts that aren't on a Monday. Yay! This also means I have a lot of time to study, edit, write, procrastinate, and socialise without getting interrupted by class. This could go one of two ways. Either, I'm going to utilise all this uninterrupted free time and be ultra productive for eleven weeks... or I'm going to melt into a pit of eternal laziness. I'm hoping for the former, but we'll see!

2. My units this semester are Power, Politics, and Texts for Young People (as a part of my Children's Literature minor), Editing and the Author (for the Professional and Creative Writing major), Ethics in Global Society (for the self-coordinated philosophy major) and Philosophy, Art, Film (also for the philosophy major).

3. I had to get an Australian Style Manual and Mackenzie's The Editor's Companion 2nd Edition for EATA. They are amazingly beautiful resources and I am going to keep them forever.

4. I read The Hunger Games again for the kid's lit unit. I maintain the opinions which I stated in this blogpost from early last year, though I would like to insert the word 'impersonal' to the part where I'm talking about the style of writing and the issues I had there. The class about it was pretty interesting and my first assignment is about the book, so I'll probably blog about it again in the coming weeks.

5. I didn't meet my own deadline for the WALLS edits. I was SO CLOSE to finishing it the night before classes started, but it was past midnight and I was really tired and I know I only had five pages left but I stopped and went to bed and haven't touched it since. I am a bad person. I really want to finish it. By the same token, I've enjoyed the task so much that I don't really want it to end, but I am eager to get into the next stage of edits and just generally keep improving the manuscript.

6. Although I still have five pages to go, my room looks pretty cool with all the pages covered in red pen and highlightings and sticky-notes stuck to the walls, if I do say so myself.

7. The next edition of Wordly magazine is coming soon with the edits well under way. We are expecting to launch in two weeks and start our call for submissions for the last edition of the year shortly thereafter.

What writerly things have you all been up to for the past month? 
- Bonnee.

Writer's Update: Subconscious Avoidance and Trigger Warnings

I've returned to res this week so that I can edit to my heart's content and do my first week of readings before  trimester 2 classes start next week. I'm very excited to get back into study-mode and also to see all of my uni friends again (Holmes, Watson, I miss you guys!). I'm also excited about my awesome timetable. I got all of my first preferences for my class allocations, and have ended up with all 8 hours I'm required to be on campus scheduled from 9-5 on Monday. I may not have a lunch break, but I have a six day weekend and optimum availability for work at the library and helping put together the next edition of Wordly magazine. Be jealous of my six day weekend.

But for this next week, I'm aiming to edit 10 pages of my manuscript each day in order to complete this first round of serious edits before classes start again. So far, so good. My pages (along with my hands and the cuffs of the sleeves of my hoodie) are covered in red pen and orange/pink/purple highlighter. On Sunday, I finished the first wall of pages, which just so happens to be the first half (70 pages) of the manuscript.

Not a great photo, but you get the gist.

I had plenty of chances to finish this wall of pages before I went back to my hometown. I had five pages left when I departed res and since I've finally finished those pages and continued to edit ten more on the next wall, I think I've figured out why I kept putting it off. It's most likely just coincidental, but it's not like I didn't know what those five pages that I kept avoiding contained. Yesterday and today, I have edited fifteen pages, and it has been emotionally taxing. I knew one of the sad parts was upon me for edits and I might have been subconsciously avoiding it because I of how dark the story was about to get.

I've passed the worst of the emotional sections for now, but I know there's another part coming up towards the end that is even more intense. I wonder if I'll find myself avoiding those pages when I get to that part.

This all makes me stop and think about the things people read and write. I know I've put my beautiful character Mil and Kovax through some really traumatic shit. But where does a writer draw the line? I tend to go with the philosophy that nothing is off limits, but does that lessen my chances of getting published later? WALLS is something I'm going to want to stick trigger warnings all over because of how messed up some parts are, even though I'd rather let readers go into the book without knowing what to expect. I've considered being more subtle about certain things which are currently heavily implied, but I don't want to beat around the bush with the dark parts of this story. That isn't my style, not in this book anyway.

I had this issue on my mind the whole way through NaNoWriMo last year when I was cranking out that first draft, but I set it aside and told myself I could come back and reassess the situation later. Earlier this year, an old friend of mine who used to get me to edit her fanfiction work (oh those were the days...) got in touch with me again for the first time in a couple of years and we started working together again, only this time I let her read some of my work too. I was giving each chapter of WALLS a quick proofread and then sending it to her for feedback. I had just sent her the third chapter when I decided to mention that later in the story there were some darker issues. With most of my other friends who have read a few chapters, I never bothered to mention it, but I wanted to warn this friend because of some personal stuff involving people around her that I knew had contributed to our lack of communication in recent years. At first, she seemed alright with it as long as I warned her when she was about to read the sad chapters, but when she asked for a bit more detail as to what I meant by 'sad', I told her truthfully some of the darker issues that were going to be covered and she never replied. It could just be another coincidence and she's dropped off the face of the earth again and will email again in a couple of years, but I can't be certain that her sudden silence isn't related to the touchy issues I warned her would be later in the story.

So I guess to end this blog post, I'm wondering what you guys think about story content worthy of a trigger warning.  Have you ever read it? Did the book come with a trigger warning? Have you ever written it? To what extent of detail? 

- Bonnee.

Writer's Update: Editing and the God-Complex

There are many writerly things I have to share with the blogosphere that have occurred in the past week, but I'll backtrack to them at a later date. Today, I have a writer's update to share with you.

On Monday, while I was printing off an assignment in the library, I decided to also print of my manuscript for WALLS so that I could begin the editing process. I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to physically spread the manuscript out on the walls of my bedrooms so that I would be able to edit thoroughly without having to scroll through a document constantly.

Tonight, I scrounged up as much blue tack as I could and removed all of my posters and decorations from my bedroom walls to make way for the 138 pages that is my 2013 NaNoWriMo child. She took up two walls and two of my wardrobe doors.

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

The first 70 pages on one wall.

Pages 71-127 on this wall.

The final chapter, pages 128-138, on my wardrobe doors.

That quote came to my head as I was putting the pieces of paper up, and I realised, though not for the first time, that writers are gods. We create these settings the way we want them to be, and we create these characters to put into those settings - those worlds of our own - and then we have complete and utter control over them, their actions, their circumstances, everything. We determine whether they live or die, whether they find their happily ever after or spend their lives in misery. We are in control of everything that happens to them, everything that doesn't, and everything that could. 

That makes me feel invincible. 

Having said all that, I feel like a complete and utter psychopath and I want to give a special shout-out to my housemates, especially the three who witnessed some of the blue-tacking, for putting up with the craziness that has barely begun. 

I want to have given this all a thorough edit by the time my classes start again in mid-July. I still need to do a couple more assignments, but once they're out of the way, my JuNoWriMo project will be in full swing. 

Do you feel god-like? Do you have a JuNoWriMo project? 

- Bonnee. 

Putting Myself Into Writing: Why I write, the emotions I write from, and who I write for

First of all, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone for being supportive of me after my little freak-out last post. I had a bit of an irrational moment of self-doubt, nothing a bit of venting and good friends couldn't fix. 

One of my uni friends who read my last post got in touch with me last night and we had a good conversation about writing. We discussed how we subconsciously put parts of ourselves, including our experiences, opinions, emotions, and even our personalities, into our writing and our characters. Once I thought about it, I was a little shocked by how much of myself I'd revealed in WALLS. Of course, WALLS is a work of fiction, and I didn't deliberately put in those pieces of myself. Only people who know me really well would be able to find all the similarities. There are some obvious things. For example, after reading the first chapter my friend said he could see a lot of me in the character Mildred. I'm not entirely sure how to take that, because I think Mildred is a bit of a nasty b-word in that first chapter... but I get where my friend is coming from in a sense (does that make any sense?). 

A part of the conversation was discussing why my world-building might have been hindered while writing the first draft and I think we came up with some good theories: why I'm writing; the emotion(s) I'm writing from; and who I'm writing for. 

I have been writing with mid-late teen characters, because I relate to them easily. I fit into that age bracket and I know what sort of things happen to them and go through their heads, and I'm surrounded by others of that age who give me examples outside of myself. I write a lot of teenage angst, because I know it and want people to understand it and how to deal with it, even if I'm using fictional characters and circumstances. Therefore, I sometimes write from unstable emotions, even though I'm writing fiction. In a first draft, my focus is on the characters rather than their world and I tell myself I can come back to correct the imbalance later. Realising the seriousness of that imbalance is probably what stressed me out and made me doubt myself. Now it's a matter of being rational and distancing myself from the initial emotional splurg of a first draft to look at the writing objectively. 

As for who I'm writing for, it hasn't been for myself very often lately. NaNo'13 was probably the first time I've written for myself in a long while, because I've otherwise been writing for uni assignments (workshop classmates and tutors), Deakin publication opportunities, or for people on my blog. In those circumstances, I hold back and cut myself short to stop things from getting too long or sounding ridiculously unprofessional and overemotional. I've become so used to writing to a formula that the idea of writing for myself without one, or at least without the formula I'm used to, left me feeling a little in-over-my-head when I got to the end of that first draft and realised how much needed fixing. 

It's only a first draft and it doesn't matter if the world-building wasn't top-notch from the first word. Everything that needs fixing can be fixed in re-drafts and I shouldn't worry so much about everything and doubt myself. I wrote a novel, a first draft of over 88,000 words, in less than 40 days. That's an achievement. If I can do that much, I can make it the rest of the way. 

Have you ever subconsciously included something real and personal in your writing? Why do you write? What emotions do you write from? Who do you write for? 

- Bonnee. 

Writer's Update: 'WALLS' edits, world builing, self-doubt, and word counts

I've spent the past couple of weeks starting to edit the first draft of my NaNoWriMo project 'WALLS' and it's been a bit crazy. I have had an amazing amount of support from friends on Facebook and especially people I know from uni who have been reading the first chapter or two for me and giving me some really helpful feedback. Those people know who they are, but I want them to know how appreciative I am of their help.

My goal at the moment is to make sure my opening chapter is as strong as I can make it and at the moment I need to work on my world building, not only in the first chapter, but throughout the whole story. I'm trying to pay a little more attention to the world building in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books while I read them (just under 200 pages into Clash of Kings). The world I am creating is very different to the one he has created, but the way he has created his is so phenomenal that I'm sure paying attention to the craft will be worth my while, especially since a couple of my friends who have read the first chapter or two have said they want to get a better feel of the setting.

One really good comment a friend made was that I should be able to communicate my setting through the everyday life of my characters. My main character, Mildred, is a refugee in a city surrounded by a wall that was erected to keep the citizens safe from the dangers on the outside, but the City itself is controlled by an invisible figurehead with strict laws and too many eyes and ears reporting back to him, and the self-granted right to change his mind as he pleases. Basically, Mildred is only there because she would probably be killed by the rebel army destroying homes on the outside of the Wall.

After receiving a bit of criticism on the world building issues, I read a bit more with that in mind and realised that my world building is actually really terrible. I mean, thank goodness this is a first draft or I would probably just bash my head with a brick and have it done with. I'm hoping that with the fact it needs fixing in mind while I continue to edit, I'll be able to make this story a whole lot better.

Which brings me to my next dilemma. At the moment, with the editing I have done so far to the first three or so chapters, and with a lack of world building throughout, 'WALLS' sits at 87,962 words. I wrote the initial 88-89K first draft in less than 40 days, but editing is a different story and that number is daunting. I'm trying to take things one chapter at a time for now, but even so, thinking how much work I'm about to have to do and how much longer it's going to get if I do it properly is actually really scary and I'm starting to have moments of self-doubt. Can I actually pull this off? Sure I can. At least, that's what I'm going to have to keep telling myself.

And then the word count presents a second issue: how long is too long? Because once I do this world building properly, it's only going to be longer. I don't even know what genre I'm supposed to classify it as anymore and I've stopped telling the people who are reading it for me because I want them to tell ME where they think it belongs, because I'm afraid I'll put it in the wrong category. I mean, it's for older teens and young adults, and I've been told that a good length is about 60K... but then there's The Hunger Games. And I think 'WALLS' is a little (lot) more sinister at times than The Hunger Games. I just don't know. I've always been of the mindset that length doesn't matter: a story should be as long or as short as it needs to be, to be told well.

This post has turned into a more of a venting/rambling train of thought which may or may not be coherent, so I'm going to cut myself off here and go to sleep.

How do you find world building when you're working with an alternative universe? Do you end up doubting yourself even though you've already come so far? Is a word count important to a story? How do you decide what genre or category your writing belongs in?

- Bonnee.

Writing Spaces: Editorial Practice

Greetings! As of earlier today, I have completed all of the classes, assessments, and the exam of my very first year of university. Now I'm considering participating in NaNoWriMo seeing as I'm free for November, though I'm not committed to it yet because I'm in the middle of writing WALLS and I'm not sure if it has a whole 50k words left to it or if I want to start something else before I've finished it.

Anyway, I thought that seeing as I'd finished university for the year, I should probably get the re-cap of the final Writing Spaces lecture out here. In our final lecture, we were visited by some of this year's editors of Verandah, Deakin's annual student-run literature and art journal. They shared some of their experiences with us and gave us some advice on editing not just our own work, but also editing the work of others.

Editing is an intervention on behalf of the reader, but editors also have a duty of care to the writer. This can sometimes be conflicting, especially within the context of being employed as an editor and having to apply what the publishers want to the situation. Because of this, editors have to be sensitive, tactful, and brave when identifying what the piece is, what is might be and what it could be. Another place editors have to practice extra sensitivity is when they undertake the task cross-cultural editing. This is for various reasons including making critical, aesthetic, and technical decisions, especially when translating from another language. Knowledge of the other culture is vital for cross-cultural editing to work smoothly, because you cannot edit in ignorance. The guest speakers used the example of an Australian children's book written by an indigenous author from the point of view of an Aboriginal child, which editors then tried to make 'white' because they didn't understand and couldn't accept the cultural differences that the piece presented.

There are a few different stages of editing, including structural/content editing, copyediting, and proofreading. The last two are checking for consistency, especially of spelling and punctuation. Editors need to be well-read and have good literary and writing etiquette skills.

The Verandah editors shared a few of their own experiences from their year on the journal's editing team. Being a part of the editing team wasn't just about editing for them, because they also had to take care of the business side of things. The Verandah team had to handle financing, distribution, production, design, and marketing. This is where I should mention that the Verandah editing team consists of a bunch of students in the third year of the same course that I am currently undertaking, which generally doesn't focus on such business skills, presenting them with a new challenging experience. Verandah is run by third year students of the Professional and Creative Writing major every year, so I will most definitely be applying for a position for the 2015 edition.

Of course, there was editing to be done. The team at Verandah followed the Australian Style Manual when editing and had to learn to work with the writers of accepted submissions to negotiate edits and get pieces to fit into the overall style of the journal.

The guest speakers also gave a word of advice for writers. Writers need to be able to separate themselves from their writing in order to edit. I think a good way of doing this is to have some time between completing the draft and starting to edit. There are two reasons for this. 1) A break from the piece will allow you to read with fresh eyes that don't automatically correct mistakes without acknowledging their incorrectness. 2) You won't take criticism from yourself and other people so personally and you'll find it easier to listen to, accept, and consider criticism.

I could go on about editing and my editing processes, but I will save it for a later post.

How do you feel about editing? Do you have any tips or tricks to share? Also, who else is doing NaNoWriMo? Tell me about your plans for the month of writing. 

- Bonnee.

'Grammarly' Review

Another apology for my absence from the blogosphere. I'll be catching up on all the blogs I usually follow over the next couple of days. I miss this place, but settling back into university has been intense.

About a month ago, I was offered a one-month premium membership for Grammarly, an online word-processor, in exchange for reviewing the product. I thought it would be a great opportunity to see what alternatives there are to proofreading and relying on Microsoft Word as I usually do.

Grammarly is a great online word-processor that can be used as a second set of eyes when proofreading. After copying and pasting the text or uploading the document into the programme, you can select the type of writing - general, business, academic, technical, creative or casual - and start the review process. The review process picks up on a wide range of spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure issues and suggesting synonyms. As well as pointing out mistakes, it explains why the highlighted text could be incorrect, giving great examples to help the user understand. It then allows you, the author, to choose whether or not to correct it, assuming that there may be an exception to the rule. You can repeat the review process multiple times after making corrections until the document is as close to perfect that the product can make it. You can also use the Grammarly editor to check for plagiarism.

A Grammarly account has a dashboard similar to that of a Blogger or Goodreads account. The dashboard contains some statistical features such as how many documents you've checked, your average score based on how many mistakes are made per document and your score trends over time. The dashboard also categorises the types of mistakes you make - punctuation, verb form, confusing modifiers, pronoun use, etc - and shows how many of each type of mistake have been detected in the texts you've checked over. Perhaps the most useful feature on the dashboard is the 'Personal Writing Handbook', which is created by the programme and updated as it checks your work, detailing the mistakes you make most often and explaining why. It gives you the most relevant writing rules to help you, based on your Grammarly usage.

Grammarly can be used to check a range of documents for you, such as emails, blog posts, creative fiction and resumes. It's a great second set of eyes if you would like to create an account. It is known for catching more mistakes than other word-processors such as Microsoft Word.

Of course, I'll be reverting back to Microsoft Word once my one month premium account runs out, because I'm a poor, unemployed uni student. I can make Microsoft Word accept my Australian-English and Australian writing etiquette too, which is always helpful. I'd like to thank Grammarly for the opportunity they gave me to use and review their product. It's been a fun experience and I've really enjoyed it.

Has anybody else out there used Grammarly?

- Bonnee.

www.grammarly.com 

Writing Craft: Structure: Sentence, Paragraph, Story... and Tense!

Greeting all! As well as being inundated with university assignments and being forced to further neglect my blog, the blogs I follow and my own creative writing and reading goals, it appears the beautiful Australian summer weather has all but vanished as winter reaches out to us down in the Southern Hemisphere. I am wrapped up in a giant blanket with cold feet and a half-eaten packet of chocolate ripple biscuits while I try and motivate myself to get an essay on the power of social media underway...

Moving on! Something I've been meaning to do for a while is give a shout-out to Victoria Simox, who recently had a give-away of her middle-grade book The Magic Warble, which I won an ebook copy of a about month ago (yes, I am very behind schedule here, I know!). You can find Victoria on her blog at www.victoriasimox.blogspot.com. 

Victoria was born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, to an Austrian immigrant mother, and a Dutch immigrant father. She now lives in Western Washington with her husband, Russ and their three children, Toby, Kristina, and William. Her other family members are a Chihuahua, named Pipsy and two cats, named Frodo and Fritz. Besides being an author, Victoria is a home-schooling mother of twelve years and an elementary school art teacher of eleven years. In her spare time, Victoria enjoys managing her two older children's Celtic band. She also loves writing, reading, painting watercolors, hiking, good movies, and just simply hanging out with her family and friends. 

Today I'll summarize what we were taught in weeks 4 (When? Structure: Sentence, Paragraph and Story) and week 5 (When? Tense) of my Writing Craft classes.

Structure: Sentence, Paragraph and Story

Readings for week 4 were Triptych by Merlinda Bobis (pages 119-121), The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges (pages 117-122), and Flying to Belfast by Dermot Healy (pages 319-331). 

Our lecturer explained the difference between 'story' and 'plot', which is that 'story' is anything between the first and last event of a narrative; events unfolding in chronological order, without links, the the dot-point or 'and then... and then... and then...' feeling, whereas 'plot' is how these events are put together and linked and how their arrangement emphasizes the relationships between them (cause and effect), which creates a reader's reaction of surprise or suspense, etc. 

Our lecturer talked a lot about 'time' and how it is hard to talk about; how we can't access human incidents in time without narrative. We humanize time when we write so that we can structure it for ourselves; although time is a constant thing, we talk about time freezing, stretching, disappearing etc. So how does our practice as writers raise questions of what it is like to exist in various kinds of time? We describe someone sitting in a boring lecture feeling as if time is dragging on and on and on. How might a practice of writing and reading influence our own and our readers' experience of time? We, as writers, have the power to control or at least influence the way our readers feel 'time' when they read our stories. 

Tense

Readings for week 5 were The Lover by Marguerite Duras (pages 3-16), and The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (Pages 3-13). 

This lecture focused a lot on verbs, their function and their importance. Verbs are doing words and any full sentence or independent clause needs one. When using verbs, writers also need to consider their place in time. The base form of a verb - or the 'infinitive' - can be found by putting the word 'to' first, eg: to bring, to run, to jump etc... however, the infinitive does not tell us details such as who, when and whether the action is possible, wished, completed etc; it is the pure notion of an event before detail is added. Who or what is the subject of the sentence? Who is completing the action of your verb? What tense are you writing in? These all come into consideration when giving the verb details. Writers should also consider the subjects gender and whether they are a singular or plural form. 

Correct and consistent use of tense is important to stop your reader from becoming distracted and ensuring that you writing flows as smoothly as possible. The two most basic and commonly used tenses are 'past simple' and 'present tense'. The 'past simple' is usually used to signify the story's present and is considered the simplest and often most suitable way to write. Present tense is less common in prose and often has interesting effects on the feeling of literary prose. 

A third type of tense our lecturer wanted us to look at was 'past perfect'. When 'past simple' relates to the now of the story, 'past perfect' is used to describe the story's past, as in memories and events that are being referred to which have already happened. We use this tense when we are describing something a layer further back in time. We can identify this tense when the word 'had' is used before the verb. Eg: 'I jumped' becomes 'I had jumped' or 'I'd jumped'. Slabs of text written in 'past perfect' tense can often sound clunky, but when referring to the story's past and the story's present, it is important that both the writer and the reader can differentiate between periods of time.  

I appear to have lost the notes I took in my tutorial. This is both worrying and disappointing, because there was a really cool quote I wanted to share with you all and some more cool examples... 

Does anybody have any interesting or useful tips to share on sentence, paragraph and story structure or tense? 

- Bonnee. 

Writing: Internal Thoughts

At the moment, I am editing my manuscript for KATHERINE with the intention of sending it into a competition some time in March, and/or to an agent later in the year. As I'm reading through, I've found myself adding a lot of description where I felt the flow was poor, and rewording a lot in other places. 

One thing I've found myself recalling is the show don't tell advise. I've noticed a lot of instances where I've simply told how the main character is feeling instead of showing it. One of the ways I'm correcting this is by turning the sentence from the narrator's point of view, into a piece of internal thought from the character's point of view. For example: 

She didn’t want to make friends, but at that point, she felt that it would have been wrong to push him away. 

Has now become:

I can’t be your friend, she thought. But I can’t push you away now. It would be wrong. 

But my worry is that I'm going to delve into my character's thoughts too often. I haven't gotten to the point where she's having an all-out internal monologue; I'm avoiding anything THAT full-on. So my question is, what do all of you out there think of using internal thought when writing?

Being somebody who, so far, as written mostly in past tense and third person, the use of internal thought gives me a chance to slip into the characters 'there and now' feelings. I personally think it can be useful if done properly, but what do you think?

- Bonnee.

'The Hunger Games' (Book 1)

Over the course of the past week, I've read the first installment of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Wow, what an adventure that was! A few people told me, when I mentioned I was reading it, that I wouldn't be able to put it down, and I have to admit, they weren't wrong. In all honesty, I couldn't sleep last night and ended up reading it from about 2:00AM until around 4:15AM.

While I agree it was a good book, I can't say I ended up as excited about it as I was hoping to be. I had too many issues, not so much with the story itself, but with the writing. Somebody told me, before I started reading it, that books written very simplistically are proof that you don't have to write very well to be a bestseller. I can't say I exactly agree with them, because I don't think simplistic is the same as not being able to write very well. But Suzanne Collins kept a very simplistic style of writing throughout The Hunger Games, and I felt that it was TOO simplistic, considering the themes it was carrying and the complexity of the situation and the characters. I understood what was going on perfectly, but I found myself disliking how easy it was to understand, because sometimes it felt like I was being told in dot-points. I believe that certain points in the story could have been more meaningful if the style of the writing had been a little less simplistic, such as character relationships. We kept getting the idea that Rue reminds Katniss of her little sister Prim told to us, but I didn't feel it being shown as well as it could have been. I don't mean that the author should have used every big words in the dictionary she possibly could. I just feel that the simplistic style of writing against the dark and complicated plot and back-story made it sound very childish, when the protagonist isn't so.

Go ahead, crucify me for criticizing a bestseller if you must. Go on, get it over with.

The other issue I found with this book could probably be credited to whoever did the proofreading and editing. As I want to be an editor myself, one thing I can't stand is continuity issues within the writing. And I notice them without meaning to. There was a point where Katniss was counting, and it was written, 'One, 2, 3' and I almost lost my shit. One moment, tracker-jacker was hyphenated. Suddenly tracker jacker was not hyphenated. I found myself criticizing sentences as I read them, for being clunky or poorly worded. Maybe it's my own fault for having such a good eye for catching such things, but it really bugged me!

Are you all gathered around my house with torches and pitch forks yet?

Please don't kill me. I promise that overall, I really did enjoy reading The Hunger Games, and intend to continue reading the sequels, although I've been warned it goes downhill after the first book. Katniss has done things in book one that cannot allow her to live the rest of her life without some sort of serious repercussions  and I do want to see how the reunion with her family and Gale goes, and how the romances play out in the long run. I've been forewarned *SPOILER ALTER* that some tragedy occurs regarding Prim and that Katniss isn't going to end up with who I want her to end up with *SPOILER OVER*. 

Am I dead yet? Well, I hope not, because I'm still typing and I don't want to be a zombie, so...

Thoughts, debates, arguments for or against my opinion of The Hunger Games? Talk to me in the comments, and please keep your deadly farming equipment away from me.

- Bonnee.