Alex Miller is an award winning writer, and this may be his most poignant, yet authentic masterpiece. His portrait of African migrants living in France is both socially accurate and fascinating to read and his characters are strong and real. It was a pleasure to read.

My only complaint is the daughter of the main character is extremely irritating, and I fail to see the importance of her inclusion to the plot in several scenes. This is quite nit-picky however, so other than that I would absolutely recommend you read this book and escape in its richness.

Graded 4/5

Please visit: wishesforaworld.tumblr.com

Secondly, I want to start up this blog again, but for book reviews instead of writing tips. I don’t read general fiction often, but if you enjoy literary fiction, non fiction, genre style, poetry etc. come check it out!

The format of the blog will change for this next section; I can’t post as often as I used to, as I have a new job and less time on my hands. All suggestions for reviews are open and if you want to send in your own, I’ll choose the best written to be featured on the site. Come on, bombard me!

zoe-babe23@hotmail.com

1. Write what you know, it’s old-hat and uninspiring but it’s the best advice. You know about business; write about it, you know about divorce; include it, you know about scuba diving; make it a theme in your novel. It’s simple enough.

2. Don’t sumit poetry, short stories or any short fiction to academic-loving, ‘magazine clique’ publications. I wrote a series on this so check it out for further details, but suffice to say if you don’t have a PhD your chances of publication are extremely slim. Give-aways on this are blurbs about big-wig writers on their pages: they will all have fellowships or be literary professors, trust.

3. Have fun with it and love it and if you don’t; try another topic. Never write stale, it doesn’t help in the long run to finish a project you hate, because publishers will hate it too.

4. Get yourself a literary agent pronto if you want to be an author. The rejected ‘slush pile’ is the inevitable end for your novel if you don’t have solitication from a publishing company. The best way to be solicited is through an agent.

5. Read books about the craft of writing by other authors, there are a lot out there. I think the best one is Dianne Doubtfire’s Writing guide, you can buy it cheap on Amazon.com

So there you have it! Enjoy the shortened version my lovely peeps, and look out for my new blog ‘Spices’.

Ali

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog, that you’ve felt it’s a little easier to continue this lifestyle of hoping and failing by finding out you aren’t the only one. Maybe you even learnt stuff, . I have learnt a lot myself, about what people want in a blog and what they don’t, about what I like to write on here and even more about other forms of prose since I had to do so much research for my posts.

Things that have happened in this period for me, (just to recap since my goal was to document this period), are that I got a paid job writing a column, I have finished my book as aforementioned and I’ve met you lovely peeps. Thanks so much for reading and commenting and liking the blog. I will be starting a new blog on another topic special to me in the next month or so and will post the link here so you can check it out, if you like. In order to condensce everything I will post my Greatest Hits of Tips next so you don’t have to scroll through everything to get your fix.

Best of luck in your own endeavours and keep your fingers crossed for me!

Ali x

Flash Fics

Writers of flash fiction have a hard market to play to; there are no publishers who want short story compilations these days and online publishers are few and far between. The best flash fiction magazines can be found at www.bellaonline.com, I have found. Look under the writing section. Although this is a women’s site, men can also find a good magazine to submit to here as well. Don’t be scared guys.

Submitting to fanfic sites on the other hand, can not only be a fun, educational experience it can be funny as hell. Don’t take it seriously and put your best work on there, just have a go. You can laugh yourself silly at Harry Potter or Sex and the City fanfics, but don’t go for the Twilight ones pleease, have some class!

As a side note, I wouldn’t recommend setting up a blog to write poetry or flash fics on, simply because you can’t copyright it in its entirety. It’s still possible for people to steal your work and post it somewhere else, and you don’t want that crap happening, so be patient and only submit to e-zines and magazines.

Bloggers

Obvious answer is: start one! Pick a topic you love whether it be philosophy, cars or art and stick with it. Update regularly, try to be humourous and fun. Put in stuff you love, but also don’t forget your readers are often going to have different tastes, so try and cater to them.

If you want to make money off the exercise, try Google Adsense and see if that works for you. It all comes down to trying things out in blogging, there are no rules!

Wannabe Journalists

You may think you have to be trained and certified to do journalism but you would be wrong in some cases. First, try submitting opinion pieces to get yourself noticed. Pick a big-city newspaper because it means more to see your name in print in The Sydney Morning Herald rather than the Warwick Chronicle. When publishing big it’s also more likely other people will notice you too, like editors.

Secondly, if you have a specific skill that many other people want/value like cooking, make-up and hair, finance or car racing, send out queries to magazines and newspapers who publish columns or specialty articles. Include your CV and write a great cover letter. You never know your luck. Writing freelance is the easiest way of being a journo without being a journo, if you get my drift.

If however, you want a real job at a newsrag, I suggest you do a course because that’s the easiest way to get your foot in the door, really. Try www.open.edu.au for Open University distance education and online courses. Then you don’t even have to rock up to class! Perfect!

Comic Writers

I’m not sure what Reduction22 meant yesterday with the term ‘comic writers’. So I’ll list a few; comic strip writers/artists, stand ups and funny-book writers.

For stand ups, I’d suggest looking online and in your own life for material. I did some research on this, because I am no comedian, and the vast majority of comedians said this in their interviews on Youtube. So I’d start there. Try to relate these scenarios back to people in your life and use those people as your characters. Look at books, movies, Funniest Home Videos…

Make sure you practice on yourself and your family before trying a few local venues with your stuff, just to avoid the booing and tomato throwing thing. Gina Riley, one of the creators of the Australian Kath and Kim series, said that when she writes gags for TV she tries to make herself and her acting partner Kath Turner laugh. Then she knows whether it’s good or bad, since making yourself laugh can be harder than making your mum laugh, for example. Try it!

For funny-book writers, read read read other people’s material and find out what sells. Those Books for Dummies are also a good resource, you can find them in relation to comedy writing at every good bookstore.

Lastly, look at the comic strips in newspapers if you are a comic strip writer yourself. You can switch things up and get ideas from the published greats such as Garfield and Cyanide and Love.

When it comes to the drawing part, Neil Buchanan’s Art Attack had a great episode on cartoon strip drawing at one point; check Youtube for it. I know it’s kids stuff, but this is actually the best way to learn sometimes, because it’s incredibly simplified and made that way so the kids might actually get off the couch and try it.

Good luck!

Depending on which type of writer you are and what you want to do with your skills, there are several different avenues you can take and I thought you’d like a summary of where you can go from here.

Novelists

If you are a novelist, take heart because there are a lot of different avenues now available due to the wonders of modern technology!

E-books are becoming increasingly popular with bookshops and readers alike. Borders has a big new e-book system installed. It isn’t the back of beyond or beneath you in terms of the ‘writing world’. Try it, you may have more success, since it’s a separate system to hard copy publishing.

Submit to short story magazines like The Sun Magazine or Aberrent Magazine online; they will help you improve your skills. Short story writing is one of the hardest forms and makes you a better, more succint novel writer.

Create an e-zine. Look up starter kits on Google and pick the best one for you. It will give you insight into the publishing process and get people reading your work without the judgement from publishing companies and cranky editors.

www.lulu.com. If all else fails, this self publishing website is the best, it’s less expensive than others I could name but won’t, and you have control. Until you print it’s free, I believe. Still, self publishing is your last option. Please believe me when I say you need to have GOLD on your hands to make this work!

Songwriters:

Sign up for music festivals and open mic nites to test out your stuff. Give musicians a buzz, tell them you prefer the song writing part and other singers may like your work enough to want you to write something for them. A friend of mine did this and is now writing full time for a local band. It’s turned into a great partnership and although I know little about the songwriter’s world, it seems like a good arrangement to me!

Poets:

Re-read my Magazine Cliques series and pick a good, fair mag to submit to, this is your best way of being heard.

There are a couple of publishing houses who still look for and actively publish poetry volumes. One is called Melville House and is situated in the USA. Less and less companies will publish books of poetry now, so take advantage of it while the service is still around.

I’ll have more info for you bloggers, journos and flash fiction writers in the next post. Have a great weekend!

After having a gander at a few How-to style books, all I can say is this:

1. Listen to what you want to write. Don’t plagiarise, but gain ideas from other songwriter’s work. Be inspired and blown away and impassioned by it.

2. Write about what you know is the golden rule in all writing and this is no exception. It’s not a strict rule, but it’s so much easier to write from your own perspective than someone else’s.

3. Figure out which order works best for you; writing lyrics and then composing the melody or the opposite. If you do it the one way and its wrong for you, it will be more frustrating and difficult.

4. Research topics that have made previous songs hits and stick to your strengths, what you are passionate about. Hallelujah was good with Leonard Cohen singing it, but turned into a knockout for kd Lang. Why? Delivery. Think about that in your writing process too.

5. Avoid cliched phrases like; we’re meant to be together, on the wings of a (insert bird species here), I’m lost without you, Forever in my arms etc. etc. etc. They’ve been done to death. Try to be original and think of different ways to say overused phrases.

6. Get the Oxford Dictionary and a good Rhyming Thesaurus, they may come in handy when you get stuck.

Stick to these beginner’s ideas and, according to my Songwriting For Dummies book, you’re well on your way to writing a good song. Luck to you!!

So here goes, some of the offenders are:

Pedestal Magazine (the most complicated submitting system ever, a waste of time)
Island Magazine Australia
Ploughshares Magazine (notorious ‘academics only’ publication)
The Paris Review (extremely snobby)
Threepenny Review
The Harvard Review

These magazines are the ones that come up most frequently in search engines like Google, so it’s probable you may have submitted to them already. If you disagree with any of these listed, please let me know. I’ll be happy to post your feelings in my next blog entry. Hope this helps you out with your process .