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A Woman out of Tech

17th March, 2015 / Zoë / 0 Comments

An ode to women still in the game in 2015

Writing this post feels like playing a game of Bloody Mary. Put your finger on a keyboard and say “Quinn, Wu, Sarkeesian!” and a bunch of gamerbros will appear as if by magic to take your life and/or your sanity.

Before I was an author, I was a Woman in Tech. Yes, capital letters are needed these days, because it’s a Thing. It didn’t feel like much of a thing then, and I don’t know if that’s because I worked for a company that never made it a thing, or because Our Time hadn’t come yet, but there is something happening in the tech world that makes me glad I’m no longer part of it, and yet simultaneously sorry I’m no longer part of a solution that needs to be realised.

Seasons between seasons

10th March, 2015 / Zoë / 0 Comments

The Norwegians I know who have been to Australia, even lived in Australia, say one of the things they missed the most was a sense of the seasons changing, something they felt was demonstrably absent from their time down south. Being from the south of Australia, I never really understood this claim; it’s only way up north that they talk about “The Wet” and “The Dry” as opposed to the four seasons. But after nine years here in Norway, I begin to see the difference with greater clarity, and it is not really about four seasons at all, it’s about at least eight.

Now, in early March, there is often still snow and ice about, and not only that, there is frost that reaches deep into the soil, reminding the dormant seeds and bulbs to go back to sleep; it’s not yet dawn. This year, however, almost all the ice and snow has melted after an unusually warm February, with a lot of rain and—very unusual for this part of Norway—wind. But, spring has not come yet. Spring, as I describe it to my almost-five-year-old daughter, is when the trees get their leaves back, the birds and animals bear the results of winter snuggling, and colour returns to the earth in a confetti-like spray of flowers and fresh, green leaves. This is not what we have now. We are in between, balancing, waiting . . .

Two lives and homeless

20th January, 2015 / Zoë / 6 Comments

I lead a double life. One life, the one I was born to, exists in the heat and dust; the other, the one I chose, stands knee-deep in snow. Once every two years, I forsake one for the other, give up my knee-high, wool-lined boots for sandals, and expose my pale, vitamin-D deficient skin to a sun that is as ferocious as it is glorious.

The flight, thanks to new routes, is now down to a minuscule twenty-two hours, but those twenty-two hours are spent in the sort of limbo that separates one life from the other as surely as sleep is separated from waking; whenever I am in one place, the other is like a dream I can’t imagine was ever real.

YA and Proud

2nd December, 2014 / Zoë / 0 Comments

When an author says, “I write children’s books”, the reaction is often one of approval and respect. After all, what more noble pursuit in literature could there be than creating the foundation for future generations of life-long readers?

But when a writer says, “I write young adult books” the reaction can be, sadly, quite different. And the more I talk to other writers of young adult fiction, the more I discover how many of us are still having to defend our choice to write it.

NaNoWriMo. Again.

6th November, 2014 / Zoë / 0 Comments

It’s November again, and for the second year running, I’m attempting NaNoWriMo. That’s the thing where you write a whole novel draft in thirty days. Okay, technically you only need to get to 50k words to “win”, but we call it a novel. Last year I wrote daily throughout November and December and completed the fourth book in my Eidolon series, but this time I’m attempting something completely new. And something I’m keeping completely under wraps until it’s finished, my agent has had a look, and we decide what to do with it. All I can tell you is that it’s contemporary (i.e. no dead people walking among us like those cheeky eidolons), and that I’m very excited about what it might become. For the first time, I’ve decided to write about something I’m personally passionate about—which is kind of terrifying.

Retreating

10th October, 2014 / Zoë / 2 Comments

Last weekend, two of my best friends (also writers) and I went up to a cabin in the ski resort town of Hemsedal, about three hours north of Oslo for a mini-writing retreat and jentetur (girls’ weekend). I had a plan to finish revising one of my novels, Audrey had some school work to do before heading off to a “real” writing retreat in the States the next week, and Chelsea just needed some inspiration to get started again.

Chris had generously offered to drive us up there, and his ears were likely throbbing by the time we arrived due to the incessant chattering and laughter that made the four hour journey (we stopped for lunch and grocery shopping) seem so much shorter. We talked about everything from inadvertent climbing expeditions to a nine-year-old boy’s fascination with googling pictures of butts.

The End . . . for now

26th August, 2014 / Zoë / 1 Comment

It’s done. The draft of Belladonna is finished and in the hands of its first beta-reader. Luckily for me, I get to share it with one of the talented writers I met earlier this year at the Djerassi Writers’ Residence. Susan was my first choice of beta reader not only because she gave meaningful and thoughtful critiques on the piece I took to the workshop there, but because we had discussed Belladonna on a hike around the property, and that talk got me over a huge hurdle I’d been struggling with for months prior. Needless to say, I was both relieved and happy when she agreed to read it.

Sabine: Creating a Monster

28th July, 2014 / Zoë / 4 Comments

My current work in progress is one I’ve been struggling with for almost two years. Given that the first two books took a collective thirteen months and the third only two months, this has been a source of constant frustration for me. However, I am nearing the end now, with almost 70,000 words down (and a rough target of 90,000 to finish this draft) I begin to see why it has been so tough.

Uncomfortable truths

23rd April, 2014 / Zoë / 1 Comment

In the flurry of stress and activity that has been the pulling together of the second Oslo Writers’ League anthology, I almost forgot to contribute a piece myself. In the end, I ran so short on time I had to dig through my short story stock and find something already written, then repurpose it. In this case, where the themes were “Identity” and “Crossroads”, I decided the best fit was a non-fiction piece I wrote under pressure from a former colleague who was fascinated by my discomfort with all things Australian. Being homeless—in the sense of never having really felt “at home” anywhere—is a sensitive subject for me, and writing the piece was both unsettling and revealing. Even when it was complete, I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t very well submit it to Australian journals, not when, to my mind at least, it was unpatriotic to the point of being insulting. But would foreign journals understand it? Or, more importantly, care what it was saying? I doubted it (as I often doubt myself—it’s a writer’s prerogative). So I put it away and tried not to think about it.

My Writing Process

4th April, 2014 / Zoë / 0 Comments

My participation in the My Writing Process Blog Tour is thanks to Djerassi YA Workshop pal, Susan Crispell, who writes magical realism for both young adults and the adult market. Her book, Love and Cupcakes came out in January this year from Swoon Romance, and I had the pleasure of reading and critiquing the opening her very recently completed new YA novel, How to Take a Life. I loved what I read of her work, and am sure the new book is destined for big things. I also have to thank Susan for tagging me in this tour, because my blog has been sadly neglected since my return from Djerassi, and it’s high time I got back to it.

This particular blog tour is a really good way to find out about new authors and their books; you can follow the blog tour on Twitter via the #mywritingprocess hashtag.

And now for my answers to the questions…

Zoë Writes