Stories & Tips: September 2021

Writers Sauce - WWC - MWS 22-September-2021

Welcome to Writers Sauce. We have three new topics for you to check out, including our BREAKOUT WRITERS FESTIVAL videos!

See CONTENTS below.

Lalitha, Hemali, Alicia, Michael and Mrinal are our our newest subscribers. We now have 336 subscribers. You’ve joined a great group of writers :)

If anyone would like to invite friends to join us, just forward this email to anyone anywhere in the world.

Become a paying member and you’ll get your own author profile page on WWC as well as the ability to promote yourself and your books via our main page. It’s only $20 a year to cover the costs of the website. Everyone who works on this website does so for free.

https://www.worldwriterscollective.com/wwc

If you want to add to this email with your own words of wisdom, let us know. Get in touch with anything you think writers would like to know. We can also/otherwise add info to our NEWS section on the WWC website.

It’s all done for free and it’s off our own backs’. Please get involved if you have the time.

Thank you,

Mat Clarke

www.worldwriterscollective.com/mat-carke

Contents:

(Look for the *NEW* stamp below for content you haven’t read yet)

1. Book Review (more reviews on books wanted)

2. Writing competitions - BIG CASH PRIZES *NEW*

3. Promote your blog

4. How to: Write your way to a more miserable life - Part 3 *NEW*

5. Breakout Writers Festival success! *NEW*

6. Writer volunteer Jobs

7. Melbourne Writers Social Group upcoming events

8. All Write! upcoming events

9. We want to hear from you

10. Join us and we’ll promote you

11. Essential Information for Writers

12. Important links

1. Review a book title - It will be posted on the WWC website

Are you someone who likes to review books (poems, short stories, movie scripts, blogs, non-fiction, etc.) and give honest feedback on content, interest, characters, structure, or if you think it was just really good reading? Submit your review via this email.

For 2021 please review any book or script or poetry you like (yes, you can submit a review done on your story if you like).

Here’s a review by Magz Morgan of Cecile Ravell’s story: https://ravellc.wixsite.com/ravell-the-writer

‘Coming, Frankwen’. The voice of the three-year-old child calling to her brother and hero, opens Child Magical. Cecile Ravell’s story is a memoir of a childhood in transit, from Brooklyn, New York, to Malta then Melbourne, Australia.

In a series of poignant and funny cameos, seen through the eyes of a little girl, Ravell brings to life an intimate immigrant tale. The vignettes follow this feisty little girl from moments of triumph, to moments of indignation, as she becomes aware of her position as an outsider in a society that values fair-haired children, and as a girl who plays second fiddle to a family culture that reveres boys.

Child Magical provides valuable insights into the reality of what it feels and looks like, for a girl, growing up; in particular, an immigrant girl.

Read it slowly, savour it in your favourite armchair, or read it quickly on public transport. Either way, Ravell’s story is a good read, piquant and thought-provoking.’

Magz Morgan, author, ‘Motherlands’.

www.magzmorgan.com

2. Current Writing Competition - managed by Ray Stone

Short story competition - World Writers Collective

The big one - WWC Golden Pen Award - Win $250 First Prize

There are two other prizes. The second prize will be $100 to spend in a Red Bubble store and one-year membership of Creative Writers Collective. The third prize will be a FREE entry to any one of the competitions for a year and one-year membership of Creative Writers Collective.

All three stories will be published in the anthology.

https://www.worldwriterscollective.com

Become a World Writers Collective member, which helps support everyone in the group as indie writers and allows you to collect prizes if you win.

Want to get published or publish your own works and have our members spread the word about your works, book launch, or other? It’s only $20 a year to join which helps pay the few hundred dollars it costs for the domain and host the website each year.

www.worldwriterscollective.com/writing-competitions

If you are one of the top winners of the competition, you will be included in the 2022 anthology. That's just one of the great reasons to get involved with the anthology!

We also want to promote you. All you have to do is say the word.

3. Promote your blog

We want to promote your blog. Email us a link of one of your blogs and an explanation of why WWC people would enjoy reading it.

Here’s one from Mat Clarke:

https://matclarke.blogspot.com/2019/12/roadside-thriller-story.html

It’s an interesting short thriller story written and performed as a podcast by Mat Clarke and directed and produced by Noel Anderson.

4. How to: Write your way to a more miserable life - Part 3

“Writing is a pursuit naturally fraught with difficulty. But don’t worry, you have the power to make it much worse.”

By Laura Gilmartin

Link: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012075519045

In this month’s instalment of how to be a more miserable writer, I’m encouraging you to:

Choose something long for your first project

… and unleash a torrent of unnecessary pressure, self-doubt and apprehension into your life.

Some people begin their writing career by developing essays, short stories or poems, whether working by themselves, or in the course of study. They produce and publish them slowly, feeling appropriately challenged, motivated, and increasingly confident in their abilities. From there, they’ll tackle longer projects with the support of the network of writers and editors they’ve created along the way. But, while these people regularly write, they are not really writers. After all, whether or not someone is a writer has nothing to do with being able to present a body of work or a proven ability to operate to publishers’ requirements, and everything to do with wearing scarves indoors.

If writing was accessible and we associated it with positive emotions all the time, we would stop needlessly suffering, and then how would we channel the angst we need to come up with ideas for heart-rending novels that never make it past our notes app? To embody this angst, we must consider that we are not sufficiently a writer unless we are dedicating ourselves to a novel, non-fiction book or feature-length screenplay. Notice that in doing so, we expect ourselves to have outstanding plotting, dialogue and editing skills where our previous writing experience consisted of half-baked letters to VicPol to dispute speeding fines and text messages autocorrected and with emojis where punctuation should be.

Because your first project is big, it will most likely take years. The good news is, most of that time won’t be spent actually writing. You see, it can take years for a seasoned author to produce a book, because drafting is a serious skill. It requires humility, focus and knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses. As neophytes this is not our niche, and so we’ll want to approach the task one of three ways:

1. We work on the first chapter or scene for three months and once it’s word-perfect, we stare at a blank page where chapter two is meant to go, despondently sip our coffee, then close the project and seriously consider becoming a professional gardener;

2. We commit ourselves to the chapter outline. We spend six months weaving a complex web that ties off perfectly, except for that one detail that EXTENSIVE (surface-level internet) research couldn’t resolve. We begin writing, only to come upon that niggling detail and decide that, unfortunately, it has the power to derail the entire effort. In this case too, we suspend our project for some indefinite future time. Or;

3. We join a competition which requires us to write 3,000 words per day for a month, only to age approximately one year for every day we stay involved. For example, seven days in the program equals a life shortened by seven years. After that, just looking at the thumbnail of your document will have you bringing up your breakfast juice.

Next, we spend two years having beautiful haunting dreams about our project and waking up primed with ideas for it. At this point our subconscious is apparently tired of waiting for us to actually draft, and makes literal the phrase, ‘I could do this in my sleep’. We open the document and have the immediate desire to work on it, only to be struck by the sheer workload the task demands. We shed a tear, expose our hand to a few manic, self-loathing rounds of stab-between-the-fingers-game with our favourite pen, and retire to Facebook.

You see, it’s not just that drafting demands so much of us, it’s that we want our work to be good. Funnily enough, writing tends to attract people who love words, who know their potential and who, when they’re new, also suspect they’re not doing them justice. This is an issue that can only be improved through more writing, and fantasising about your first project being the next pick on Oprah’s Book Club is a great way to intimidate yourself into doing less of exactly that.

If unrealistically high expectations are your thing, you’ll love my next recommendation: Take your writing talent so seriously that you alienate everyone around you, due in next month’s issue of Writers Sauce. It’s going to be pure genius ❤️❤️❤️

5. Breakout Writers Festival success!

by Mat Clarke

ONLINE is the new norm. This may not be the way we want things to be, but for now we will have to make the best of it. And we have! When Louise Crossley, fiction and corporate writer, approached me and said, “Hey Mat, let’s do an online writers’ festival and invite all our colleagues to participate. We’ll do talks, interviews and have some fun with it.” I of course agreed, and so in a few weeks we were well underway with a date set.

It turned out be a wonderful evening full of information regarding many of the subjects that creatives enjoy. We taught, we helped, we answered questions and we laughed. The great news is you can enjoy the entire event or sections of the event you believe you will find interesting right now. All you have to do is visit our webpage: www.worldwritercollective.com/breakout-writer-conference

More videos will be added as they are edited out of the raw video footage. If a video you want to watch is not there yet, please check back in a couple of days.

6. Writer volunteer jobs

We would love you to join our network of writers as a creative leader and help you further everyone's knowledge of writing. No doubt, you'll learn more about yourself and your writing as well. Have a read below and see what fits your personal skills and lifestyle. Commit to what you can and we'll see you in the trenches. Most of all, have fun!

Opportunities:

Manager of writing competitions - Ray Stone has taken on this role

Website manager

Information officer

Assistant to managers and officers

Writing Competition Judges

Event host - multiple required (Melbourne only)

Further details: www.worldwriterscollective.com/job-vacancies

These are all volunteer positions.

Your position includes free membership, a discount for any events you attend, free access to catering (if supplied) and an allowance for the manager positions (see position details).

Commit for 12 months or longer.

7. Melbourne Writers Social upcoming events

During the virus outbreak we suspended some of our events, with most returning ~~January~~ December 2021. Our main flagship event runs at the Wharf Hotel on the third Tuesday of the month. Please join us - all are welcome, even if you are only thinking of starting out in a creative field.

Things may change as the Victorian COVID condition changes. Click here to RSVP, check time and place of events: https://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Writers/

We meet online every Monday from 6.30pm and show each other our work and chat about everything creative.

South Bank Write Now: Second Saturday of the month. The venue is generally quiet, opens early, free wifi, good coffee, food as well as drinks if you need them for later ;) There is music, and it is a cafe-bar, so bear this in mind and wear head phones if you need them while you write.

Melbourne Central: Fourth Sunday of the month. We are nestled in the back corner of the upstairs food court near the windows, past the colourful piano, behind the big clock. We meet to write mostly, but you are free to chat with others who would like to do so.

Eastern suburbs meet. Laura, Stephanie and Mat are exploring a cafe in Croydon to meet at, which will be run on certain Sundays. We will get back to you soon on how it will be run and what the format will be. Likely it will involve the return of our writing games event with prompts to get you writing and enjoy yourself.

Not currently running: Writers of the South, let’s write: This is for southern Melbourne, down as far as the Clayton and Mentone area. Anyone can attend and join in and write your heart out (and have ice cream).

Not currently running: Writers Workshop: If you want to work through a piece, then come along to the Eltham Library and let us help you create your best work.

Not currently running: Treehouse Writing: Join us in Olinda for a sanctuary in the hills where we write and relax.

As with all our events, please get in touch if you would like to help with running events. The best way to do this is to come to one of our events and chat to the current event hosts about what you would like to do. We prefer to have two event hosts at each event, so where there is an opening we are happy for you to get involved.

There are many other Writing groups in Melbourne that you may be interested in as well. Go to them all and see what you like . . . but then come back to MWS and bring more great people with you. Haha ;)

https://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Writers

Stories & Tips

Tuesday 21 September 2021

Writers Sauce - WWC - MWS 22-September-2021

Saturday 11 September 2021

Breakout Writers Festival 11 September 2021