The title search concludes: Across the Dark Sea
After months of searching and much angst, I've finally come up with a title for the National Museum book about Trung, the little Vietnamese boy who arrives in Australia with his father on a fishing boat. Like many things in life that we spend a lot of effort on, in the end it arrived effortlessly, when I wasn't expecting it!
I'd been working on the picture book
One Night - because although I'd got very excited when I was reading it aloud and working with Kerry Millard, and thought I'd solved all the problems, when I got home, printed it out and read it aloud again, there were still lots of bumpy bits. I decided to stick one of these tricky lines in my head while I meditated.
However when I went back to work I remembered that I still hadn't sent my list of barely acceptable titles to Trung's editor, so I started to type them out again - and suddenly a new title slid into my mind:
Across the Dark Sea. I deleted everything else, sent it to the editor - who emailed a few minutes later to say she loved it, and so did everyone else at the museum who'd been involved in the project (who'd all also tried to come up with a title!) Now I'll just have to remember to tell all my friends and family that I've sent this story to in the hope that someone - anyone! - would think of the perfect title!
Sometimes it's not easy to remember my own rule about writing - that one of the most important things is simply to have faith that eventually, if you keep on doing the best you can, the story - or the title - will work itself out. In this case, doing the best I could meant picking key words out of the story, then key themes, free associating with both of those; then doing a short synopsis of the plot and seeing if there were any catch phrases from that, and finally doing a logline, like a synopsis of the boy's emotional journey throughout the story. This helped me understand why I hadn't liked some of the titles I'd come up with before, but for a long time it seemed that all the titles that expressed the logline were too dark, too sentimental, or too boring!
And then, when you've done that work, sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing: sit and meditate and let your subconscious do the work. After all, the subconscious is where all good writing comes from, no matter how much conscious work we have to put in to make it into a book.
The copy edit of the book arrived two days later, so the title was truly just in time. The editor is now about to select an illustrator, and I believe that Across the Dark Sea will be published in late 2006 or early 2007, as part of the Australian National Museum's series
Making Tracks.
Workshopping
Peeling the Onion readers might be interested to know that I've just returned from a week of intensive, innovative, physiotherapy in Sydney... so we can hope that Anna has something similar after the end of the book, and has the same boost of improvement: less pain, less motion sickness and more freedom of movement. It's never too late to hope!
In between therapy sessions I visited my friend and illustrator Kerry Millard, and can't believe how much work we got done. In a more formal session I guess you'd call it workshopping: I got to hear and comment on her wonderful new picture book in progress, seeing how she lays out her rough sketches and cuts and pastes the strips of text to see where she wants them. The art work is already finished for a few of the spreads, and it's delicious. I always find it such a thrill to see what an illustrator has done with my work - but I couldn't help being envious of her talent, which gives her the freedom to plan everything right down to the endpapers. Luckily the envy was outweighed by the fun of her comments on possible illustrations and styles for my projects - and the gratitude that she's already illustrated three of mine (
Ark in the Park,
Nim's Island and
Spook's Shack.) She'll also be doing the illos for my Aussie Nibble,
Too Much Stuff, which will be out in 2007.
We also went over a picture book text I'm working on with the working title of
One Night, and searched for a title for a junior novel to come out with the Australian National Museum in 2006. This is the story of Trung, a Vietnamese boy arriving in Australia on a fishing boat in 1978. Trung and his own story are fictitious, but the boat he could have arrived on are in the Museum - I was taken to see it last year when they asked if I could the story. So now the story is done, and many many pages and hours have been spent trying to think of a title, but I'm still not happy with any of them. Still, I now have another short list of titles to send to my editor, and maybe they'll spark something brilliant from her!
Finally, I read Kerry the first 65 pages of my new adult novel, whose working title is The Mosaic Mermaid. I'm always terrified the first time I read a manuscript to someone, and I'm sure I never read so badly as when I do it. However the combination of finding flaws and encouragement to go on, made it more than worthwhile.
Now I need to go and put all these corrections into my computer, and send
One Night off to its new home!
lecture at Chisolm Institute
This has been one of those weeks with lots of the admin sides of being an author: setting up the blog; sending out info about the Nim's Island competition; filling in forms and contracts - and also giving a guest lecture in the "Industry Overview' subject at Chisolm Institute in Berwick and Frankston (Victoria, Australia). It's a great opportunity to meet so many people who are serious about a profession in writing or editing, from first year university students (one of whom brought me
Ark in the Park to sign! She'd got it for her 9th birthday, so it was quite special to be signing it ten years later and know that it had been loved for all those years. At the other end of the spectrum there were a few grandparents, who were determined that it was about time to follow their dream and start writing.
Another highlight of the week was reading a draft pilot script of
Paradise Palace, and hearing about the meeting when it was pitched as a network series. (In Los Angeles, a bit far for me to pop in) The script was very funny! Maybe it'll go ahead, maybe it won't - but it certainly won't if we don't try. I'll let you know what happens.
In fact, it was quite a busy week for projects. I signed a contract for an Aussie Nibble:
Too Much Stuff, which will be illustrated by Kerry Millard and published in 2007. It seems a long time away! However, two other books will be come out in Australia in between - and I'll tell you more about them next week.
Happy reading
Wendy
an author learning to blog
Hello to anyone who's used to reading my diary at
www.wendyorr.comI've decided that the time has come to learn to update it myself, without having to ask my wonderful website guru - and so I've started this blog. (That's a web log, for anyone like me who didn't know until a couple of weeks ago.) I'm hoping I'll be able to update much more regularly than I did in my previous diary, as well as setting up sites for special events like
(
nimsisland.blogspot.com). I've also begun one for general tips on writing:
authorjournal.blogspot.com.
The first thing I discovered is that what everyone says is right: blogging is easy! However learning and setting up anything new takes a bit of time so I'll be adding to them gradually - I've still got to meet my deadlines and the other bits of an author's working life. But for those of you interested in publication I hope it'll give you a glimpse of that life - much less glamorous than people like to presume! You should be able to follow the progress of different projects from conception t0 publication - or screen.
happy reading!
Wendy
