Friday, October 23, 2009

News and writerly things to mull over.

CONGRATULATIONS to Sandy Nelson who pitched a book in the Pitch Slam to Harper Collins and found out yesterday it will be published!

The first of many success stories we hope....

(the Spinning Gold team are very excited for Sandy....)


Kate De Goldi asked us to pass on her thanks to everyone for the kind words about her keynote. She wants to hang on to her speech for a while....However in the spirit of Kate-isms

Here is her report for the 2009 BNZ Katherine Mansfield Novice Writer Category which she has recently judged.

Kate De Goldi’s short fiction craft checklist.

*technical accuracy in both subject and form (I like to think grammatical inaccuracy is not a fatal flaw, but the horrible fact is that it often does diminish a story’s effectiveness, it prevents it communicating)

*story architecture – a shapeliness to the story’s development

* an avoidance of cliché, in either language or ideas

* imaginative use of language – fresh, startling imagery, muscular nouns and verbs; ways of describing and characterising that make me pause and re-appreciate, think anew

* believable characterisation

* credible dialogue

* a variation in sentence length and rhythm – sentence-making that has music

* writing that shows rather than tells

* a sense of place

* a narrative ‘voice’ that commands attention, that persuades, that makes me want to read on and on, no matter what is – or isn’t – happening…


All these words from Kate just goes to remind us about the most talked about quote from her keynote speech....knowing your own bone and chewing over it....

Spinning Gold Team

3 comments:

Sandy Nelson said...

Wow - my name is on the Spinning Gold site!

I am very excited to have had the offer to publish from Harper Collins. Thanks Lorain Day and the Harper Collins team for believing that the The Ghosts of Iron Bottom Sound is a story that needs to be told.

I want to thank Fleur Beale for her honest and ever-so-useful feedback, and for believing in my ability to write. Thanks also to Barbara Murison for endorsing this. And of course to the Spinning Gold team for the conference and the opportunity to pitch.

Good luck to anyone else waiting to hear from publishers ...

Sandy Nelson
Twizel
Land of tussocks and mountains

Nikki Slade Robinson said...

Congratulations Sandy! You must be stoked. Let us all know when the 'birth' is imminent won't you.
My pitch story... I'm planning to send it off this week so then comes the waiting game. Who knows!
Have fun! Nikki :)
www.penandink.co.nz

Johanna Knox said...

Congratulations Sandy, and good luck Nikki!

Re Kate De Goldi ... in honour of her speech at Spinning Gold, I think we should all start making sure we use occasional, appropriate semi-colons - and a perfectly placed semi-colon in a piece of NZ children's literature should henceforth be known as a 'Kate De Goldi semicolon'. ;o)