On Being Recognised

So this is the third in a three-part series I've been working on with Anna Branford and Sally Murphy.

I'm not entirely sure what approach the others are going to take to this topic. There are, of course, all sorts of ways of defining 'recognition'. There's the formal recognition of awards and the informal recognition of people such as peers and readers and random strangers at the shops.

Very early on in the scheme of things, I remember being full of excitement because someone had found my website on purpose, by searching for my name, rather than accidentally, via some variation on "goldfish + ponds" or "hyrdrocodene".

Once, I was doing laps at the local pool, complete with swimming cap and goggles, when I was stopped, mid-turn, by a lifeguard who wanted to know if I was "that writer-woman in the paper".

More recently, after writing a letter of complaint to a local business, I was asked during a follow-up phone call whether I was "the" Meg McKinlay, putting me in the unlikely position of having to say, "Define the."

These things are all recognition of a sort.

But I suspect that in writing about this, at some point each of us will home in on the formal awards, and in some ways it's a curious alignment that the three of us are doing this blogapalooza together because last year we were all shortlisted alongside one another in the Younger Readers category of the 2011 CBCA Book Awards.

Although this wasn't my first shortlisting, it felt quite different to the others. It felt bigger, as if my work had found its way to a broader stage. My earlier shortlistings – for the 2007 WA Premier's Book Awards and the 2008 WAYRBAs – felt closer to home, and in a certain sense that was true, as this was back when the WA PBA was only open to West Australian writers.

But the CBCA Awards feel like an entirely different beast to me. And I can honestly say that I had never once seen them as something I might be part of. I don't have a good reason for this, other than, I guess, the fact that none of my three earlier books had been acknowledged by them. Without really actively thinking about the awards – feeling neither anticipation nor disappointment nor much of anything else at all - I think I had somehow decided they had nothing to do with me.

Then all of a sudden, Duck for a Day was on the Notables list. Then all of another sudden, it was on the shortlist (because of the time difference, the gap between hearing the news of each was, for me here in WA, very short. By the time I turned my computer on, the Notables list had been up for a couple of hours and so the shortlist followed very soon after).

That day, I wrote a post about my response to the shortlisting, the vagaries of judging based on earlier experiences with poetry competitions and so on. I won't go over that ground again, but the post is here for anyone interested.

I'm not really sure what to add to that today, but I guess I might simply say that I'm very glad to have been shortlisted exactly when I was. I'm glad it didn't happen earlier, because that afforded me a healthy lack of expectation or even concern. And I'm glad it didn't happen later, because in some ways, it's given my profile a little kick that was very timely. Until Duck was shortlisted, I don't think I was really on anyone's radar much outside of WA. And yes, I know we live in a global village and all of that, but living and writing over here does make a difference and when this topic comes up, people from "Over East" almost invariably say, "Oh, but that doesn’t matter these days!" and people from "Over Here" nod and say, "Tell me about it."

But that's a whole other topic which I won't discuss here, except to make it very clear that I'm not on any level suggesting there is any bias – in the awards or elsewhere. All I'm really suggesting is that until something happens to push your head above the parapet, physical distance does have something to do with psychological distance, and it does matter.

I think that being shortlisted put me on the map in a couple of ways. It made people aware of my work in a general sense, and it collapsed the distance somewhat from here to there. I'm hopeful that momentum will carry through to a certain extent. I hope that when people see my name on a book, or in a festival program, they might be more likely to remember it now, to think, "That might be worth a look." I was very glad to have the recognition for Duck itself, and it opened up some wonderful opportunities for me – not the least of which was Tony Bones' wonderful musical theatre version of Duck for a Day, which toured during Book Week 2011 - but I guess I'm also hopeful that it will have a broader flow-on effect.

When I say that my shortlisting was 'timely', that's what I mean. It's timely for me now to have had this little kick, to have my name put in front of the industry in a more concrete way. For it to matter, I of course have to keep producing quality work. And I also have to accept that even if I do that, I might never be shortlisted again. As much as I'd like to pretend that I'm philosophical about that, the truth is that now I know that it's possible that such awards might have something to do with me, I'll find it impossible not to be hopeful. I am hopeful. I think hope is a good thing, a useful thing, as long as I'm aware that if those hopes don't come to fruition, it isn't necessarily a reflection on the quality of my work.

And if I feel a bit deflated and need a little ego-boost, I guess I can always console myself with a trip to the local pool.

On Being Edited

So this is the second post in the three-way blogapalooza I'm sharing with Anna Branford and Sally Murphy. Because it's part of a series, I've followed the same format for the title, but the first thing I should say is that I think it's misleading.

You don't 'get edited'. I've never 'been edited'. It's not a passive process in which the writer sits back and waits for the editor to tell them what needs to be done. It's a dialogue – a back-and-forth that begins with the text, moves to the editor, bounces back to the author, who returns to the text, then bounces it back to the editor, and so on thusly for the term of your natural life (or so it can seem).

When I show people the six-page editorial letter for Annabel, Again, or a marked up draft of Surface Tension I get some interesting reactions. Some people actually draw back in horror. But isn't it your story? How can you let them? From time to time I hear people - often aspiring writers - talking about the way publishers insist on 'changing' people's work, to shape it to fit their own set of parameters.

But really, that's not how it works. Or at least, it shouldn't be. If a publisher were to take this approach, I too would walk very quickly in the opposite direction.

My experience of 'being edited' has been that in every single case, my manuscript has emerged from the process as a stronger, more satisfying version of itself. Editors, in my experience, are the savvy, objective readers who guide your manuscript towards becoming the best version of what it is already trying to be, rather than steering it towards being any kind of version of something else.

The truth is, I love editing. I love everything about the process. I love taking the lump of clay (what we so often optimistically call 'the final draft') and seeing it get flattened and kneaded and hammered into shape (for more gratuitous pottery-writing metaphors, click here). Of course, I'm the one doing the flattening and the kneading and that's a confronting and difficult thing when you thought your beautiful sculpture was already finished, but it is also very satisfying when you have confidence in the process and the endpoint you're working toward.

I didn't always feel this way, though.

My first experience of being edited was something of a shock, actually. It was many moons ago when I was being mentored on a YA manuscript. This was really the first piece of fiction I'd ever written and I thought it was brilliant. It got me a mentorship and I thought I was on my way and many accolades were just around the corner (publication would happen first, of course, but I knew I had that in the bag).

Then I got the first part of the manuscript back from my mentor, a well-known YA author, and it looked like this:

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but I would estimate that close to 70% of it was highlighted in yellow. And when I uncovered the colour-coding key, cunningly buried a few pages into the manuscript, I discovered that yellow did not, in fact, mean, "Alert! Awesome writing!" but rather, "You could probably cut this bit."*

Going through that process unstitched me and then put me back together again. I learnt so much. I learnt not to be precious about what was on the page. I learnt that it was raw material, to be flattened and kneaded and slashed and burned and various other agrarian metaphors.

And I learned something else, too.

Because my mentor and I were very different writers. At one point, I began a chapter with the line, "A bomb went off at school today" and my mentor wrote, "Oh, thank Christ! Finally something is happening."

Unfortunately, he had commented before reading my next line, which read, "Oh, not really. That kind of thing only happens on Home and Away."

To be honest, my first reaction to his comment was, "I can't work with this guy. He seriously thought there might be an actual bomb? I don't write like that. I … I… I… mememe mybookmybook blahblahblah."

Then I took a step back. Because it wasn't about the bomb. I didn't need a bomb. And he wasn't really suggesting I did. What I needed was, exactly as he said, something to happen.

I had not actually realised that I'd written approximately 50 pages in which nothing at all happened outside of my character's head.

I'm not saying you can't write a story like that. Maybe you can. But at the very least, it needs to be a conscious choice. You need to know that you're doing it. And why.

That's part of what editing has done for me. It's helped me understand that when I write, I'm making choices. And that there are other choices, other possibilities; that the way things are is not the way they must be.

It's made me realise that I do have a voice, that what I think of as simply writing the story the way anyone would write it, is actually me writing the story the way only I would write it.

It's helped me own that a bit. To be aware of the choices I've made. To interrogate them and be open to alternatives. To defend them when necessary.

I would never have put a bomb in that story. And no editor would ever ask me to. But they would certainly point out that nothing had happened yet, and ask if that was what I had intended, and was I thinking about the consequences for the story, and my readers, and were there perhaps alternatives that might be considered? And yes, I know, Meg, that you want to write a 'quiet' story but there's 'quiet' and then there's dead, you know? Food for thought?

Food for thought, yes. Suggestions, possibilities, guidance. These are all part of the process. But no one tells you what to do. It's always your story. Editors know this. And what they are really good at doing is working out what the story is trying to do, and helping you find ways to do it better – in the context of your story, your style, your voice.

On a couple of my books, I've done what I thought were close to total rewrites during the editorial process, stripping them back and rebuilding them from the ground up. But when I put them back together, and sat back feeling satisfied with what I'd achieved, I realised that the seeds of everything that made the final version stronger were there in the first version, sleeping quietly. Waiting for a canny editor to come along and tease them out, to guide me towards them.

This in itself is a spooky art, I think, and I suppose all editors are different in terms of how much guidance they give, how directive they are. And perhaps that varies depending on how they read the author.

Personally, I don't like an editor to be too directive. I don't particularly want suggestions on how to fix things, possible directions the plot might take, and so on. I'd rather just have the problems laid bare, maybe get a nudge this way or that, but essentially find my way to the solutions myself.

At the same time, I recognise that's a bit of a tightrope for an editor to walk, and they can't know what my particular preferences are, so I try not to be too much of a delicate flower. If an editor says, hmm, what about this? and it seems like a sensible suggestion, I'll explore the idea. Even if the impetus comes from elsewhere (and doesn't everything, anyway?), I'm still going to make it my own in the writing of it.

Along the way there is much discussion. Debate. Disagreement. You can argue. You can fight. But it's not a battle of wills between two opposing sides. It's both of you fighting for what you think is best for the story.

I like to fight. And I'm kind of stubborn. I tend to think I know best. It's my story after all. But that's not what I meant! She just doesn't get it!

But here's a thought: If she doesn't get what I mean, maybe I'm not saying what I think I am. Maybe what I meant hasn't actually made it onto the page. Maybe I've got some revising to do?

I'm stubborn, but I've finally learned something very simple. I cannot see my own blind spots. They are, by definition, blind spots. I think I'm getting slightly better at avoiding certain things – 'being' edited feeds ideally back into self-editing, after all – but I still need my editor to thwack me every now and then and tell me to just stop it. Stop overwriting. Stop telling endless, quirky anecdotes that slow the pace at crucial moments. Stop circling and circling around the point and just explain what you mean. Sometimes exposition is good. TELL, DON’T SHOW!

And so on.

I've lamented my particular writing tics in other posts. If you're interested, you can read more here, here, and here. Did I mention I have a particular weakness for overwriting? For rambling? As demonstrated in all those places, and also here.

The final thing I'll say about editing is that I don't think it ever really ends. Even after a book is published, I'm still editing it, in a way. I'll change things as I read, to smooth them over, to shift emphasis. I'll wonder why on earth I did this and not that.

The French critic and poet Paul Valery once said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." That feels particularly true of poetry to me, but to a certain extent I think it applies to all writing. We shape and tighten and remix and unpick and rebuild and at some point we have to say enough! and then the binding goes on, setting everything in stone, and on we move to the next shiny thing.

And having said that, I have said more than enough and hereby abandon this post.

* If you're wondering what green means, it means "This bit is actually quite good." See those two-and-a-half lines in the middle there? That bit.

On Being Reviewed

I've been thinking lately about what it means to be reviewed. Partly in response to recent conversations with some other writers, and partly in response to, well, being reviewed.

The result is a three-way blogapalooza in which myself, Anna Branford, and Sally Murphy, decided we would gather, and post, our thoughts on this topic with a view to starting a conversation between ourselves, and perhaps others. So after you've read this, it might be interesting for you to head over to their blogs, too. I know I'm about to. I haven't read their takes on the issue, and I'm sure we've all taken a very different approach to things.

To begin with, I suspect I'm not alone in having a somewhat ambivalent relationship to reviews. Writers need them, of course. We need people to notice our work - to read it, engage with it, hold it up to the light for others.

Maybe I should re-frame that: to pass judgement. Isn't that what a review does, after all? Isn't that what a review is for?

I actually don't think so. I don't see reviews like that. To me, a review is not an endpoint. It's part of a dialogue about a text, one of many voices. And I love dialogue. I like to talk. I particularly like to talk about books. I have, in fact, a PhD in talking about books. I spent years at various universities sitting in small, airless rooms, encouraging others to talk about books. If it weren't for the interminable marking, there's a good chance I would still be doing that in some form.

To the extent that reviews are part of that process, that broad conversation, I love them.

But what I love is a particular kind of review. And it has nothing to do with whether the review is 'good', 'bad', or somewhere in between in terms of its 'judgement' of the text. A review I value is one that has substance, one that has carefully and thoughtfully engaged with the book, which supports its own assessments rather than simply making sweeping assertions. If a reviewer does that, then I want to hear what they have to say, no matter how critical that might be.

I'm not suggesting that an unfavourable review doesn't sting a little. Of course it does. We're all vulnerable in the face of feedback. We want people to like us, and we invest a lot of ourselves in the work we do. There's a TV production company that used to sign off with the tagline, "I made this!", read in the exuberant voice of a little boy. That always appealed to me, and I'm reminded of it now. Because what we're really doing in putting our work out there is saying, "Hey, I made this! What do you think?" And that's at once a very simple thing and a very complex one. It exposes us in all sorts of ways, and negative reviews are just one possible outcome among many.

But even if they sting, I think it's important that there's room for negative reviews. I wouldn't say that I like them, but I certainly value the role they have to play in the process, and if their criticisms are explained and supported, I want to hear them. I've heard some reviewers say that if they don't like a book, they won't review it, that they prefer to only review books they can be positive about. I'm sure there's a charitable basis to this approach, but it's not a position I have any time for. Call me crazy, but I think criticism should be critical. Without it, the review process becomes anemic at best, meaningless at worst, a kind of empty noise. To be honest, I'd rather have a less-than-complimentary review that really engages with my work, than a flattering one that lacks critical substance.

If a reviewer doesn't like my book, let them review it anyway. Let them explain why they didn't like it, where they perceived its flaws to lie. I want to know why they formed that judgement, and I think readers value that, too. It's not about me, of course, but I think it's reasonable to expect a reviewer to be critical about their own response and to find a way of articulating that for prospective readers. I expect the same process to take place in a positive review. Tell me what worked and what didn't, and most importantly, why you came to that conclusion. Then we'll talk.

Metaphorically, of course. We won't actually talk. Conventional wisdom is that you should never respond to a review. I never have. But I've been tempted, from time to time. Because as I said, I love talking books - whether they're mine or someone else's. And by the time a book is published, I've probably taken it apart and rewritten it six different ways from Sunday. Most likely, over a year has elapsed since I submitted the final draft. So I have a decent amount of distance from the work, and although I'm still invested in it, I trust myself to have enough objectivity about my own books that I could be a reasonable participant in such a conversation.

And the truth is, being reviewed is nothing new, really. I've been reviewed for my teaching, my parenting, my appearance, my speech, my choice of cheese. In some sense, we're reviewed all day, every day, by the people around us, by the codes of the society we're part of. We live in a constant feedback loop, making endless, tiny adjustments in response to what we get back from others. Or perhaps choosing not to adjust, to remain exactly and absolutely the way we are. Learning who to listen to. Learning how to be reviewed.

Because here's the thing - so simple, so important. In the end, we can't control someone's else's response - to us or our work. In any reader's reaction to a book, there are many factors in play, and the work itself is just one. In the end, all we can do is be ourselves, write the books we want to write, and then hand them over, into the conversation that goes on largely without us. Then we can decide what we're going to do with the criticism we get. For me, that decision hinges on the nature and source of the criticism itself. Not about whether it's good or bad, but whether it has substance. That's what determines whether it's worth my time, my emotional energy.

So I guess I approach the process of being reviewed with some trepidation, but I also approach it critically. Not all reviews are created equal and for a writer, there's a kind of internal reviewing of the review that needs to take place if we're to survive the various slings and arrows.

There endeth my thoughts on being reviewed, at least for now. And it seems that, good intentions notwithstanding, I've rambled, and will be duly savaged by the critics. Oh, well.

The Truth Is Still Out There

As many of you know, I have been working for some years to dispel the many myths that circulate about penguins. My book The Truth About Penguins was an important step in this process.

Since its publication, I have gone into schools, libraries, festivals - wherever they will have me - presenting the facts to children young and old. Some of my audience, I find, are more easily persuaded than others. Some are downright stubborn.

Earlier this week, to kick off the National Year of Reading, I went down to Kwinana Library. There I attempted, mostly in vain, to preach my penguin-y gospel.

Audience feedback went something like this.

But penguins don't eat pizza! They're not funky! They don't go to the beach! They're not colourful! YOU'RE JUST BEING SILLY!!

It really is hard work, sometimes.

Here's something I found interesting, though. Following my talk, there was a craft activity. A penguin-based activity. Wherein stubborn children who know everything about penguins and think I'm JUST BEING SILLY made snowglobes. With penguins in them. And I watched as

they stuffed handful after handful of glitter into those snowglobes, as they dressed them up in stickers and sequins and colourful ribbon and glitter glue.

Because argue as they might, deep inside themselves, they know that what penguins really love is colour - spots and stripes and great snowing sparkles of it. They know that every penguin's fondest wish is to be as funky as possible.

Thanks for your help in my quest, Kwinana Library. Slowly but surely, my message is gaining ground.

For those still sceptical, I offer this recent news item, from the local shores of Denmark, WA. Two salient details from the article:

The northern rockhopper penguins arrived on Parry and Ocean Beaches early last week ...

Denmark's two penguin visitors were released into the wild last Thursday after a surfboard ride to an island off Walpole.

Beaches! Surfboards! I rest my case.

Career Highlights

Last week I was interviewed over at Books for Little Hands. One of the questions asked what had been the highlight of my career so far and I found it a little difficult to answer, partly because of my maddening tendency to want to unpack the nuances of every word put before me.

I wanted to wrestle for a while with the word 'career' and what that really meant for me and whether it was the 'right' term for what I'm doing with this whole writing thing. And the highlights I arrived at had nothing to do with 'career' really and more to do with small creative satisfactions. So it may be that my response was a bit disingenuous. Possibly even pretentious.

And then the very next day something happened. I had a genuine career highlight, and it was this:

In April this year, my book Duck for a Day was adapted for musical theatre by Tony Bones Entertainment.

Since they only tour on the east coast, I didn't get to see the show, but last week, the lovely Tony himself sent me a DVD of one of the performances. And I feel a little ridiculous, but watching it made me a bit teary.

Firstly, it was gorgeous. It was so well done - so cleverly adapted, so professionally and engagingly presented. The kids in the audience were clearly completely absorbed by the show. Then at the end, Tony talked about the book - why they chose it and how they adapted it, which I found really interesting and which in fact taught me a bit about narrative structure, and what I was doing without even realising it.

Secondly, it made me remember the few shows that I got to see when I was a kid, when performers came to our school, or we walked into town in a long crocodile line ("Just remember who's in front of you and who's behind you and we'll all be okay"). Those experiences have stayed with me. They have a certain glow that persists to this day. And I can't help but be moved by the possibility of that being true for some of those kids, that my story, brought to life so wonderfully, will stay with them. I know that books can work in the same way, but having Duck adapted feels different somehow. Which brings me to my third point ...

Seeing other creators adapt my work

made me feel like my story was becoming, in a small way, part of the fabric of things, becoming more embedded in the creative landscape. It's hard to articulate what I mean, but it's something I found enormously satisfying.

Fourthly, and finally, Max as a marionette. Just saying.

So, there you are. A career highlight. A real one. Thanks, Tony.

Everything Old Is New Again

Or at least one thing. Specifically, this:

It's my new book, The Truth About Penguins. And my old book, The Truth About Penguins.

Confused? Don't be.

If you look closely, you can see differences in the two books - in size, font, and other small elements to do with presentation.*

I'm delighted to announce that The Truth About Penguins will be out in paperback in December, just in time for Christmas. It's lovely to see my work getting a new lease on life like this, and I can only hope the new format helps it find its way into the hands of even more readers over the coming months.


* For the eagle-eyed reader, there is another crucial difference. If you have access to both copies, the last page of text will reveal all.

Out and About

The last couple of months have been a busy time for me. As other writers will attest to, Book Week seems to have turned into Book Month somewhere along the line and I've only just finished a steady stream of school and library visits. I could give you a bunch of stats here but I'd rather sit down and get some writing done, so instead I'll just say that I drove a lot, talked a lot, listened a lot, and laughed a lot. It was energising and exhausting, all at once. And bookings are coming in for 2012, which is lovely, but also a little alarming.

I am always amazed by the creative and insightful ideas kids come up with. There was a great wealth of these this year, but I have to say that my favourite comment from a student was: "Meg, you are the most expiring author I have ever met!" Coming at the end of a long day, this was at once motivating and accidentally apt.

I also spent some time at Beaufort Street Books, a beautiful little bookstore in Mt Lawley (which features a vaguely menacing chef-mannequin - see left). I went along to read and sign and somehow ended up buying books as well. When staff are passionate about the books, they become irresistible.


And back in July, I headed down to Balingup for "Telling Tales", the most beautiful little festival with what feels like the whole town behind it. Balingup was cold and crisp and sunny and absolutely beautiful. Readers came from far and wide. There were workshops and talks and readings. There was even a parade. Telling Tales is worth a mid-winter weekend trip from Perth for anyone into children's books.

In September, I headed for the hills as part of the HeARTlines Festival of Children's Literature and Book Illustrations which took place at Mundaring Arts Centre. I presented as part of both the schools programme and the public programme and was also thrilled to see the originals of some of Leila Rudge's gorgeous illustrations for Duck for a Day and No Bears, which were there throughout September as part of the gallery exhibition.

In the midst of it all, I'm working on two new projects - one junior fiction and one lower YA - and aiming to have first drafts on both by the end of the year. I suspect this will be something of a challenge, but I do love a deadline, even an artificially imposed one.

One final image to leave you with: towards the end of my Book Week travels, I visited a gorgeous little school in Floreat. I spoke to three classes of Year 2s, all of whom had read/heard the complete story of Duck for a Day. They helped me come up with some fantastic ideas for the sequel(s). And they knew all about ducks, because they had some. In preparation for my visit, they had set up an incubator in the library, where they had hatched ducklings - ducklings which waddled about cheeping on the edge of my sessions all day long. It was quite simply too wonderful for words.