Karen Foxlee
Karen Foxlee lives in a small country town in Queensland. She mainly works as a nurse but late at night she sharpens her pencil and secretly writes stories. Karen can’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Wings, won numerous awards and is published internationally. Karen loves her daughter, her two overweight cats and also has an unhealthy obsession with scones, gingerbread men and cloud-watching.
Karen’s Hints and Tips
1. Ideas are magical – store them somewhere safe
Story ideas are the writer’s basic building blocks. They can come from anywhere; something you hear or see, something you read, sometimes an emotion you feel. You have to catch them whenever you can and store them away.
Many writers use a diary, journal or notebook which is great but I’ve also tried plastic bags, suitcases and boxes. Boxes are the best.
My idea boxes have been and are filled not only with words but a whole heap of things that move me; special stones, pictures cut from magazines, leaves, letters, photocopies, photographs, old jewellery, fragments of poems, fabric.
Writing is mostly about practise but part of it is also just plain MAGIC. Sometimes just opening my magical ideas box is enough to get a story started.
2. Writing can be an extreme sport
While it is important to practise, to have a logical story, correct spelling, good paragraph sizes and proper punctuation it is also so very incredibly horribly boring.
Sometimes you just need to jump off a cliff and go flying.
Let go! Dive into your stories! Write like there is no tomorrow. Don’t worry about spelling! Don’t worry if it isn’t making sense. Find your characters, make them do amazing things, go crazy. Run headlong into plot dead ends and lie dazed on the ground then dust yourself off and start running again.
Later, when it’s all on the page, you can start to clean up the carnage and put your commas in. It is much more fun this way.
3. Devour books like a hungry lion
One of the best ways to become a good writer is to practise, but it also pays to read a lot. Read everything.
Read books, poems, magazines, cereal packets, the instructions on the toilet spray, textbooks, encyclopaedias, a thesaurus, DVD covers, your mother’s bills, junk mail. Keep a dictionary near you at all times.
When you find a book you love, love so much you never want to put it down, reread it. Then read it again.
4. Be Brave: write what you want to write about
If you really, really love and understand soccer, write about soccer not vampires. Unless they are soccer playing vampires. Hey, there’s an idea!
It is really important to write about stuff that means something to you. Stuff that makes your heart beat faster.
Writing is all about practise but also a lot about being brave. Write the thing you want to write even if you can’t imagine anyone wanting to read it. Writing from the heart will SUPRISE you, STARTLE you, SHOCK you and MOVE you. And it will probably do the same to someone else as well.
5. Practise
Did I mention practise? Writing is ninety five percent mundane practice. It’s WORDS, finding them, putting them in a line, seeing if they make sense. Getting them to sound good. Getting them makes someone else feel something. Like any art the more you do it the better you become.
Practise, practise and then practise some more. Show your practice pieces to people you trust; your teachers, your friends, your pet dog. Enter competitions.
Practise different styles, different points of view, different types of dialogue. Practise other voices. Copy your favourite writers one day. Be yourself the next.
Do the ninety five percent and you’ll get to the bit where all the magic happens; where stories fall into place, words sing, and your heart soars…and someone says, ‘Hey, I really loved reading that…’.
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/55240/the-anatomy-of-wings-by-karen-foxlee#aboutthebook
http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/Author.aspx/1394/Karen%20Foxlee
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Karen-Foxlee/139995856034130
