Cath Crowley didn’t decide to become a novelist right away. She did some traveling, studied, and taught, all before enrolling in the class that changed her life—Writing for Young Adults at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. It was there that Cath would write her first novel, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain. Since then, Cath’s gone on to write a number of books including her most recent work, the award winning Words in Deep Blue. Today, Cath takes us through her writing and editing process as well as her tips for choosing the best excerpt to submit to our Novel Writing Competition.
For this competition, writers are asked to submit an excerpt of a larger work. What advice do you have for writers who are trying to choose the best excerpt to submit?
This is difficult. But my advice would be to choose your top three excerpts, and then read each one aloud, imagining you’re in front of an audience. Even better, actually read the piece to an audience. Choose the piece that people enjoy, or the piece that you love to read aloud.
Can you tell us about your own personal editing process?
Editing saves me in the end, and it’s also my downfall.
Some weeks I don’t write anything new because I’m editing one paragraph. I’m doing this because I love it. And because it’s important. But I also think (for me) it’s procrastination. So now I have a rule that I write for at least two hours without editing myself.
In the editing process (after the first draft is finished) I look through my work for the obvious things—word repetitions, sentences that sound wrong in terms of rhythm, spelling errors.
But I also look for descriptions that are clichéd, for dialogue that could be inner dialogue because it’s not serving a purpose, or it doesn’t show conflict, or it doesn’t sound natural. In terms of character I want to make sure that each person has a strong character arc.
After I’ve edited, I send it to my editor. I want my editor to be kind but ruthless. I want her to tell me what’s working in my manuscript, because often I can’t see what’s good in there! But I want her to point out the flaws in my manuscript, too—word repetitions, unnatural dialogue, characters that don’t have strong arcs, descriptions that don’t work because they’re vague or clichéd.
I never take offense during the editing process because if a person takes the time to really read my work, I take it as a sign of respect.
Many of our young writers are aspiring novelists. How did you decide to become a writer? What can young writers do now to help guide them toward a career in writing?
I didn’t choose writing for a long time. I studied, traveled, taught, and then I enrolled in RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course. It was during my Writing for Young Adults class, that I wrote The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain, my first novel. That course helped me decide that I wanted to be a writer.
If you want a career in writing, you have to write. (Sounds obvious, but not everyone does it.) You need to work at the craft, and that means making it part of your everyday. It means writing good pieces and bad pieces. It means reading as much as you can. Read for pleasure but also read to learn. Ask how did this writer make me feel like this? Or, why didn’t the reader make me feel like this? I think a career in writing also means noticing details. I go for long periods not bothering to notice the color of the fence, or the way a person moves—and this shows in my writing. Notice the details of life. Write. Read.
When writing a novel, do you have a sense of the overall arc of the story before you start? How different (or similar) is the finished piece than what you originally had in mind?
My process changes (a little) from novel to novel. With Gracie Faltrain and Charlie Duskin, the character came first, and it took a lot of writing to find their stories. With Graffiti Moon and Words in Deep Blue, the setting arrived first and after writing page after page of describing the artwork for Graffiti Moon and the bookstore for Words in Deep Blue, the characters arrived. So no, with my previous books, I haven’t had the arc of the story before I start. I do a lot of writing about character and then later, usually when I feel completely lost, I go back to basics and (try) to find their ordinary world, inciting incident, first act turning point, so that I feel as though the first act is working. Honestly, my writing process is a bit of a muddle. It works best when I don’t think about it too much!
What are you looking for in a winning entry?
Things I love about a good piece of writing: an original voice, dialogue that shows conflict and character, descriptions that put me into a setting, strong verbs, a great idea.
Having written that, though, there’s always the entry that gives me nothing of what I thought I was looking for and it’s brilliant.
I think the most important thing to remember is to write the piece you need and want to write.
Your most recent book, Words in Deep Blue, won the Indie Book Awards 2017 Young Adult prize. What can we look forward to next?!
I can tell you that I’m writing again and loving it. I can tell you that the idea came to me while I was walking through France. But I can’t tell you exactly what it’s about because once I put that into words, it won’t be fun for me anymore.
About Cath Crowley
Cath Crowley is an award-winning author of young adult fiction. Her novels include The Gracie Faltrain trilogy, Chasing Charlie Duskin, Graffiti Moon, Words in Deep Blue and Take Three Girls. Graffiti Moon won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Ethel Turner Award for Young People’s Literature, and was named an honor book in the Children’s Book Council, Book of the Year Awards. Words in Deep Blue was recently awarded the Gold Inky for 2017 and the QLD Literary Award for a Young Adult Book. Cath lives in the country with her husband, her dog, Inca, and her cat, Mew.
