The Blog Tour Blog

Elizabeth at Sixth in Line has challenged me to the do Blog Tour. The thing is the challenge fellow bloggers to blog about the following four questions and then nominate three or four other bloggers to write about this stuff.

Always up for a challenge I'll give this a go:

The questions are:

1) What am I working on?
2) How does my work differ from others in its genre?
3) Why do I write what I do?
4) How does my writing process work?

And I'm nominating JK from Keep Working Through It, Dave the Plastic Mancunian, Magical M and Fletcher Beaver to give this a try. Drop me a comment when it is done.

So, here I go. 1) What am I working on?

Well, I'm about to start my Masters in a few weeks and I have a feeling that this will be instrumental on the whole of my writing process.

I have a few strings to my bow. I'm a poet and publish on my other website, Trellawney Tom . I've two novels, on young adult novel, "Rainbow Robertson and the Adventures at Hippy Corner" as well as a semi-autobiographical novel on the point - both novels are about 20,000 words in - not really enough, but the ideas are bedding down.

Thing is, I have a feeling that this research project will change a heap of things. I know I have a hankering to research some pretty meaty women's issues and write about them - abortion, miscarriage, the Comfort Women in WW2, domestic violence... why - they're topics that need a voice, a woman's voice. A rational, woman's voice. May as well write about something I'm interested in. My poetry is of a feminist bent most of the time. We will see where the research project leads me.

2) How does my work differ from other's in the genre?

Well the poetry - which is tainted by a love of GM Hopkins, TS Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy is of a women-centric bent - not that that is an unusual thing. I work with archetypes and historical figures a bit - I enjoy that.

No much young Adult writing is set in rural South Australia. Spose that makes it different.

And writing literary fiction - well, does literary fiction every change - again, other than mainly writing from a woman's perspective - an older, unmarried, childless woman's perspective.


3) Why do I write what I do?

Writing has been my voice for ever. I've felt so silent for so long, this is how I get my point across most of the time. Whether it be the deeper stuff found in poetry or literature, or the crap with which I populate this blog.

4) How does my writing process work?

Normally things get stuck in my head then they have to get out. They need a voice - particularly with poetry, which needs to be blurted out. I never spend more than 10 minutes writing a poem - a few words might get refined after, but it's like  a vomit of words comes out of me. It's a strange state of being.

Same with longer fiction. Get an idea and get it out. Then refine, and refine some more.

Non fiction - that's a different kettle of fish. I've had a few non-fiction articles published over the years, when I send articles to The Age for publication editors write back quickly, normally rejecting my work, but also saying, you can write, keep it going - I see that a a good thing. If editors don't like stuff, they don't write back at all. Non-fiction is reseached, planned, written, refined then sent off.

Same goes for the stuff that I write for work. Research, plan, write, refine. You get okay at it as time goes on.


So there you go.