The Crafty Writer » Asides

Book Review Carnival

Fiona Veitch Smith — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:05:52 +0000

Writers love to read. If you’ve read any good books lately why not submit a review to the Book Review Blog Carnival? You won’t get paid, but it’s an excellent oppportunity to hone your writing skills and check out what everyone else is reading.

Cape Town workshops – Hout Bay!

Fiona Veitch Smith — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:57:03 +0000

There has been such an overwhelming response to The Crafty Writer Creative Writing Workshops that are going to take place in Stellenbosch on Saturday 13 September, that we’ve decided to add another date and venue. The following Saturday 20 September will see The Crafty Writer road show move to Hout Bay for a repeat of the Stellenbosch workshops.
Venue: 6 Vineyard Way, Berg-en-Dal, Hout Bay.
Time: 10am

As some of the people who have signed up for Stellenbosch would prefer to move over to Hout Bay, there are now some places still available for the 13th, so please contact us for registration and payment details.

Book Club Reminder

Fiona Veitch Smith — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:41:51 +0000

For all you Crafty Writer Book Club members, we will open again this weekend to discuss Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: the World as a Stage. That gives you a few days to finish, revisit or speed read the book. For those of you new to The Crafty Writer, once every two months (give or take) we discuss a best-selling book from a writer’s perspective. As this is our first non-fiction book we will divide our discussion under the following headings:

author
genre
structure
sources and credibility
research and content
writing style
marketing

I’ll make some initial observations and pose suggested questions for discussion. Some of our regular book club participants are published authors themselves, so it’s a great opportunity to share their knowledge and insight. You don’t have to do anything to join other than pitch up and participate. If you haven’t got a copy of the book yet you can buy it through the The Crafty Writer Bookshop and we will get a small commission that keeps the Club and all the information on this website free.

11 Types of Articles to Write for Magazines

Fiona Veitch Smith — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:41:14 +0000

Do you want to write an article for a magazine, but aren’t sure how to package it? Here’s help: brief definitions of eleven article formats, from round-ups to research shorts. Fellow freelance Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen has posted this very helpful outline on her site The Adventurous Writer. Anyone who gives a list of 11 things, rather than 10, has got to have something extra to say!

I found this article on a blog carnival I participated in over on The Incurable Disease of Writing. Check it out for a great round-up of the best on the web.

And don’t forget that our free non-fiction writing course also offers you some ideas on what and how to write for magazines.

Do you want to write full time?

Fiona Veitch Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:33:06 +0000

It was the droll WC Fields who said: ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’. Well, the same can be said of the writing classes – at least full-time work that takes you out of the house and away from the thing you love the most. But before you give up the day job, read this sound advice from fellow freelance AmyM over at Three Questions and Answers.

For a British-based reality check, you should also check out my post on Can You Earn Money as a Writer?

Do you write ‘publishable’ English?

Fiona Veitch Smith — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:14:29 +0000

In my job as a new writing editor for a commercial magazine I frequently get submissions from people whose basic written English is not of a publishable standard. The same can be said for some students on my creative and non-fiction writing courses. Some of these writers have English as a second language and others as a first. I try to tell them, as kindly as possible, that they are putting the cart before the horse: if they would like to write something that may one day be published they need to get the basics right first. Otherwise, it’s like a fashion designer whose shoddy sewing cheapens what could have been a sensational outfit.

Swallow your pride

One man from Brazil sent in an article to me that had great potential; the problem was, his written English was not publishable. His grammar was incorrect, his sentence structure awkward and his spelling simply not good enough. And this man had a PhD from an English university! I suggested he enrol on an English language course back home, work on the basics, then resubmit the article to me. Six months later, he did so. The article was vastly improved. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. Now that’s a man who will lay aside his pride to become a better writer. Will you?

Back to basics

Many writers don’t think the ‘basics’ are important and focus all their time and energy on the ‘creative’ aspects of writing. Some of them simply don’t realise, like this man, that his written English was not up to scratch; others don’t care, believing that that’s the job of the editor. Well it’s not. There is a certain standard that you need to achieve before an editor will even work with you.

Test yourself

Try these tests that I discovered on a fabulous website called Daily Writing Tips. You’ll be happy to know that I didn’t get 100% for any of them! As a product of a school system that stopped teaching grammar when I was 12, I’m not surprised. But that’s no excuse. I need to work on it and get better. My English is of publishable standard – I know that because I’ve been published – but there’s still room for improvement. Another website you may find useful, particularly if English is your second language, is English Online.

Writers in conversation

Fiona Veitch Smith — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:52:54 +0000

I’ve just come across a website that features interviews with authors. This one caught my attention immediately as it is an email conversation between Markus Zusak, whose book The Book Thief was recently featured in our Book Club, and non-fiction history writer Susan Campbell Bartoletti, author of Hitler Youth. It makes fascinating reading into the respective processes and world-views of two very different authors: one a middle-aged American woman (sorry Susan!) and the other a young Australian man.

I think we can learn a lot from ‘eavesdropping’ on other writers – we learn more about Wordsworth as a writer in his letters to Coleridge than anywhere else. What writer’s correspondence have you read that brought their work into perspective? What do you think of the Zusak / Bartoletti series?

Book burnings

Fiona Veitch Smith — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:07:40 +0000

It’s been 75 years since the infamous book burnings in Nazi Germany in 1933, which coincidentally forms part of the plot of this month’s Crafty Writer Book Club book. Books that were considered antagonistic towards Nazi philosophy were piled up in town squares and burnt in a frenzy of apparent public support for Nazism. Check out this BBC clip for original footage and modern-day reflections on the burnings.

And while book burnings may not happen so publicly anymore in the West we still have censorship – if not by government decree, by public sentiment. I think, for example, of the move to have Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials removed from the syllabus of some Catholic schools in Austin, Texas.

I think too of the threat to remove Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People from South African school syllabi due to accusations of racism in 2001. The move is said to have devastated the now octogenerian anti-Apartheid activist who had the same book banned in 1981 by the white Apartheid government for opposite reasons!

Both of these examples reflect adults trying to protect children from what they consider to be one-sided and harmful philosophies. Is it wrong for a Christian school to object to a book that denies the existence of God? Is it wrong for an African school to object to an ‘outdated and patronising’ view of black people? Is it ever justified to ‘ban’ books? Can you think of any other recent ‘book burnings’? Join in the discussion by leaving your comments below.

Book Club: The Book Thief

Writing space

Fiona Veitch Smith — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:51:58 +0000

Anyone else’s desk look like mine (perhaps I need one of those hideaway computer desks)? Fortunately I don’t subscribe to the old “cleanliness is next to Godliness” cliche…

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Although my office does look like this – cluttered, but organised, like my mind – I don’t always write in it. I like to edit other people’s novels on my laptop in bed (some of them are so long I need to have a nap between chapters!). Plays are a first thing in the morning thing after I’ve had a particularly good dream that sorts out some of my plotting or staging problems – so they get done in bed too. Other critiquing, commercial copywriting, blog posts, magazine articles and preparation for my writing workshops I do in the ‘office’. When I finally get time to work on my own novel I like to do it in on the laptop in the garden in good weather or the living room in bad where I can look at the garden through the French doors. I think this is because the different expressions of writing come from different parts of the psyche. Some are ‘businesslike’ and need an office, others are more creative and need a more informal setting. Poetry, which I so rarely write these days, gets snatched on buses, trains and coffee shops as it is the most removed from my usual ‘business’ writing. But I wrote this at the kitchen table while my three-year-old daughter was painting – I stopped only to sketch in a Big Bad Wolf into her forest. What is your write space?

Ideas for writing a weekly column

Remembering ‘the grandfather’ of science fiction

Fiona Veitch Smith — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:05:02 +0000

Arthur C. Clarke has died at 90. I’m not sure if it was a grand old age, but it certainly was a grand old literary life. I knew about Arthur C. Clarke before I’d ever read a book of science fiction because of his inspirational adaptation of his short story the ‘Sentinel’ to the screenplay of A Space Odyssey: 2001. I always enjoyed science fiction films – and for a time I even watched Star Trek – but for some reason I resisted reading them. It was only when I read Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness as part of my first year English lit at Rhodes University in 1989 that I first realised that the genre wasn’t so much about science, but the human condition. I loved it. I can’t say I’m an avid science fiction reader – although I recently read a fabulous anthology of short stories – The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens – but I’m always struck at how these incredible authors, who straddle the worlds of fiction and non-fiction, can teach us about what’s in here by pointing us to what’s out there. And for that, I’m grateful to Arthur C. Clarke, the grandfather of science fiction.

The BBC on Arthur C. Clarke http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7304004.stm

I’m sure many of you are far more avid science fiction fans than I am, so please leave your comments as an homage to this great writer.

The Crafty Writer » Asides

Book Review Carnival

Related posts:

Cape Town workshops – Hout Bay!

Related posts:

Book Club Reminder

Related posts:

11 Types of Articles to Write for Magazines

Related posts:

Do you want to write full time?

Related posts:

Do you write ‘publishable’ English?

Swallow your pride

Back to basics

Test yourself

Related posts:

Writers in conversation

Related posts:

Book burnings

Related posts:

Writing space

Related posts:

Remembering ‘the grandfather’ of science fiction

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