Amra Pajalic

While preparing my novel for entry in the Vogel competition I was jotting revision notes on expressions and words I had to look out for and cull. My shit list looks something like this:

Unnecessary words that eliminated about 10% of my total word count:
Just
Then
Sat down
Got up
Turn around
All
Some
Maybe
Probably
Slightly
So
Started (walking, washing dishes etc)

I read an article that listed a whole bunch of words and am pissed off I didn’t save it. Anyone got it or the link? Or maybe you have more unnecessary words so I can expand my list.

Expressions that I kept repeating for no earthly reason I can explain:
Shrugged (there was a page where nearly every character was shrugging.)
For a moment
Flicked or tossed their hair
Gritted or clenched their teeth
Getting steamed
Stomped instead of walked
Flushed or blushed
Sighed
Jerked
Looked (lots of looking, he looked, she looked, they looked)
Shook (their head usually)

Most of these descriptions are stock clichés that serve no purpose to the actual plot. If an emotional description is required then there should be an emotional response from the character to show this. Using any of these terms is the lazy arse way to write.

Sentence starters that needed to be culled:
Oh
Well
So
Yeah

Dialogue needs to be pared down to the essentials and these words are dead weight.

Sentences that told instead of showed:
I remember
I realised

These sentences are used as drama to highlight important plot points by lazy arse writers. If there is a pivotal realisation or memory then that needs to be fleshed out into a vignette.

Usually I produce a much better quality draft but because I was writing my original draft in stream of consciousness and purposely did not edit, I now have to spend quite a bit of time culling and cleaning.

I also have to read over the draft (some time in the future) and take time to include some colour and sensations. I did a search and delete based on my shit list but this means that the areas where these stock phrases and unnecessary words appeared might be dull and lifeless.

What’s on your shit-list?

It is done. I have finished and sent the sucker off to the Vogel

. Feel like a million bucks just in achieving this goal.

I want to thank everyone who helped. Thank you to Gabrielle

, Renee

, Stephanie

, Sandra

, Pearl

, Stacy

, Jodi and Mas. You all rule!!!!Your comments and feedback have been invaluable. While my synopsis is still barely passable this gives me a foundation upon which to build on.

Now that my novel is finished I’ll be refining the draft from reader feedback and working on producing a synopsis that doesn’t suck (as much). Cheers

It is done. I have finished and sent the sucker off to the Vogel

. Feel like a million bucks just in achieving this goal.

I want to thank everyone who helped. Thank you to Gabrielle

, Renee

, Stephanie

, Sandra

, Pearl

, Stacy

, Jodi and Mas. You all rule!!!!Your comments and feedback have been invaluable. While my synopsis is still barely passable this gives me a foundation upon which to build on.

Now that my novel is finished I’ll be refining the draft from reader feedback and working on producing a synopsis that doesn’t suck (as much). Cheers

I’ve been toing and froing for the past few months as to whether I’d be able to enter the Vogel

literary competition for unpublished manuscripts. I’m working my guts out and I’ll make it, just. I really struggle with writing synopsis and telling people about my novel so thought I’d use this forum to seek feedback on my one page synopsis and my first page.

My questions are:
Does the story sound interesting?
Are there any images/sentences/paragraphs you find problematic and think should be improved on?
Is anything unclear?
Does the first page reflect the tone of the synopsis?
Anything else you want to say?

I’d be happy to receive feedback in the comments or you can email me amrapajalic@yahoo.com.au. I’d appreciate any comments by Sunday as I have to post it off on Monday.

Anything you have to say whether it be good, bad or indifferent will be helpful. I’m back to the trenches. Proofreading my novel for the last time as I have to post it Monday to make the 31 May deadline. Talk about cutting it close.

THE WOG MANUAL ONE PAGE SYNOPSIS

Wog is an Australian slang term used for people of Mediterranean ancestries that was originally offensive, but has been transformed into an almost affectionate term. The Wog Manual explores the wog life in the Bosnian community just as the movie The Wog Boy (2000) did to the Greek community. It is a 90, 000 word young adult novel set in Melbourne, Australia in 1994. The main character is Sabiha Cengic, a fifteen-year-old Bosnian-Muslim girl.

The Bosnian community considers Sabiha and her Mum white trash because of her Mum’s manic depression and man-chasing ways. After growing up outside of her community Sabiha is yanked into the Bosnian way of life when her grandfather and aunt come to Australia as refugees during the Balkan War.

As the Bosnian community reluctantly accepts them back into the fold Sabiha has the chance for the one thing she’s desired, respectability, until her Mum gets engaged to Safet, a former university professor who claims his wife and children died in the war.

The one place where she could drop the wog tag and pretend to be a normal girl was in school with her best friend Kathleen. When Kathleen’s parents discover they went to a male stripper show Sabiha is wrongly identified as the instigator and they’re not allowed to see each other.

After being bullied she’s forced to change schools and the only thing going for her is that she’s popular for the first time in her life with girls using her to be close to her spunky cousin Adnan. And she is making some new friends, if you count Jessie James the school oddball who’s pastime is making lists of people he will kill and his best friend Brian O’Connor who wears foundation and denies that he’s gay.

Then there’s her fake best friend, Dina. Their friendship is a necessary cover to hide their extracurricular activities from their Born-Again Wog parents. Dina is hiding her Macedonian boyfriend and Sabiha her friendship with Brian.

As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate she’s involved in a love triangle. Or is that a love quadrangle? She and Brian are tempted to cross the line from best friends to something more, she can’t decide whether she and Jessie should be just friends, while Edo, the hunky Bosnian apprentice hairdresser, wins her mother’s vote. After all he’s Bosnian, he’s Muslim, he’s available. What more could a girl want?

In her zeal to be a Born-Again-Wog her Mum stops taking her medication and her mania reappears. As Sabiha fights to get her Mum back on her medication before her imminent breakdown, she learns about the meaning of family and friendship.

THE WOG MANUAL FIRST PAGE

Our house was under wog siege. Again. She sent me to the kitchen to make coffee like a performing circus monkey, but this time I was going to teach her a lesson. I picked up the canister she’d bought from the two-dollar shop to store sugar, salt, flour and coffee. There were fruit pictures on the front of the canisters. The orange picture marked the sugar canister. The apple contained salt. I put the spoon in the apple canister and tipped it into the frothing coffee.

“Everything okay here?” Mum rushed in and clucked her tongue.

Now I was in for it.

“You didn’t put enough sugar.” She took the tablespoon from me and shovelled in another two spoonfuls of salt. “That’s better,” she put the spoon in the sink.

I choked back my laughter.

Mum returned to the living room and I finished preparing the coffee. You’re probably wondering what’s with the coffee. To tell you that I have to take you back to the beginning.

In the late sixth century Slavs moved down the Balkan Peninsula and established settlements. I’m just stirring you. I’m Bosnian. A few months ago that word would have meant nothing to you, but now that the Balkan war has broken out you don’t need me to draw you a map, do you?

Coffee to a Bosnian is like Guinness to an Irishman. Bosnians in the war ground rice when they didn’t have coffee beans. It’s more than a social custom, it’s a source of national pride and identity. And I was shitting on that. I picked up the tray and headed for the living room. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Kathy Holmes

blogged about the newest trend which is people shutting down their blogs. She linked to a Romancing the Blog article

which is really interesting. It made me reflect on my blogging experience and the struggle I’ve faced in finding my voice.

As most aspiring authors I started blogging for the creative expression, to motivate myself with writing and to promote myself as a author. On the first two fronts I think the blog has suceeded. Logging my wordcount really made me push ahead. Even though people reading probably aren’t interested in how many words I’ve written having the bar made me get my arse and finish the sucker.

I’ve enjoyed the creative expression aspect of the blog but have struggled to find my voice. I’m pretty up front and very open but when writing on my blog I’ve found myself holding back. Because the blog is under my name and I’m hoping to be a published author I don’t want anything to come back and haunt me down the line.

I originally had the idea that I was going to blog about all sorts of things but then reality stepped in. Can’t blog about my job because I can get fired. Don’t want to talk about sex because I don’t know who’s reading or what context it will be taken in. Don’t want to talk about my marriage because it’s too personal and not something I want to share with the world. Don’t want to write bad reviews because there are some seriously whacked people out there who will track me down. Don’t want to include too many personal details because I need to protect myself. While I’m not interesting enough to be stalked anyone can google me and know more about me than I feel comfortable them knowing. In this day and age it’s always a good idea to be wary.

Then what do I talk about? At the moment I feel very isolated and cut off from the world. I’ve been living in Sydney for the past three and a half years and haven’t established any sort of a social network. It’s been great for my writing, but not so good in other areas of my life.

I’ve noticed that when I write something that I’m passionate about then there is a reaction from the handful of people who read my blog. So the solution would be to get passionate about more things. I’m hoping this will settle when I move to Melbourne. I’ll have my social connections and hopefully become more interesting to myself and others.

In terms of self promotion my blog is a total and utter failure. I’ve made no effort to learn all the handy little techno things to track how many people read my blog or to establish some sort of a web presence. While I love reading other people’s blogs I’m picky and there is only so many hours in a day I can dedicate to this endevour.

Overall the blog has been great for my personal development as a writer. I have become more committed. It has helped fill the void from my lack of a social network. I have tried to use it to promote myself by listing my achievements and linking to them and including my current novel in the profile. I do have some readers.

While I can improve the self promotional aspect of it I think my time is better spent writing at this point then promoting something that doesn’t exist, but still the time is coming when I will need to create a website and learn all the stuff I’ve been avoiding up until now. What about you? Why do you have a blog and does it fulfill your goals?

I was reading on Ms Blogger’s

blog about the latest literary scandal in Australia. A well regarded author marketed as a young adult has published an erotic novel under a pseudonym. The most fascinating is the review. It’s quite an eye-opener what passes as a review these days.

I’ve tracked down a extract

through Penguin’s website. I haven’t read the book but the extract alone is interesting. Very literary writing but quite dull.

I’ll definetely be checking the novel in the library to satisfy my curiousity. And I’m also wondering how it will be received by the rest of the literary establishment.

I also wonder about the motivations of the novelist.Did she always want to write an erotic novel or is this an attempt to distance herself from the young adult tag that she’s been unfairly saddled with (she was first published as a fifteen year old)? Hopefully some interviews will follow to satisfy my curiousity.

We’ve been reading that the publishing industry is very hot for erotica at the moment and it seems to be true. Even Penguin is getting in on the act. It gets me thinking about that erotic novel I started but never finished. Mmmm. Perhaps I should re-think my next project.

And I can finally reveal pics of my fugly cute house. This is the front. It’s actually weatherboard but they put up a fake brick front over the top of it.

This is the kitchen. Pretty daggy. Doesn’t look like it’s been updated since the 1970s but compared to what we’re living in currently it’s paradise.

This is the real reason we bought the house. It’s nearly a 600 square metre block. We plan on becoming little gardeners. Will perhaps even get some chooks for eggs.

Overall it’s pretty daggy and there will be quite a bit of painting to make it prettier. We won’t be spending much money on renovating it. Our plan is to pay it off and save to build our dream house on the same block. The only two things we’ll be putting money into is the bathroom (it’s pretty rancid) and building an outdoor deck. Otherwise it will just be furnishings, curtains, rugs and accessories to pretty it up.

I’m pretty excited about the whole thing even though it will mean I’ll be working full time for the first time in 8 years. That’s going to be such a shock to the system. At the moment I work three days and manage most of the household errands on my days off. I still remember when we both worked full time and the agony of spending half our weekend just completing the household chores. But at least we’ll have something that we’re working toward.

The biggest problem I’ll face about working full time is the impact on my writing. But I’m going to have to be disciplined and take care of myself by excercising and eating well so I have lots of energy. My plan is to write on the train. This is how I created my current draft and it worked really well. Because I was writing in short bursts all these creative sparks happened and some of the best scenes in my novel came from this process.

Anyway I’ll play it by ear and see how I go. The fact is even when you’re working full time there are a lot of times I can write: on the train to and from work, on my lunchbreak, or waking an hour earlier and writing in the morning. As you can see I’m working hard to convince myself so I keep my commitment to my writing and don’t let it fall by the wayside.

The one thing that will help is a friend is in the same boat. She works full time and she’s struggling to write every day. She wakes half an hour earlier and writes for 20 minutes. In a week she produced 2,500 words. That’s still pretty good. So we shall motivate each other to keep going.

I’ve got my period and PMS is a bitch. It doesn’t affect me, but my husband cops it. I can’t speak without shouting my fucking head off and am feeling so fucking irritable I just want to knock heads together. He’s just finished cleaning the house while I stomped around. Ever since he watched an interview with Kathy Lette who was promoting her new book How to kill your husband and other handy household tips

he’s got a favourite question. In the interview she was saying the sexiest thing a man can do is clean, ie “No man was killed with a vacuum cleaner in his hand.” Since then whenever he vacuums he keeps asking: “Am I sexy?” Yes, baby. You’re very sexy. Just don’t mention the word sex to me right now or I’ll chew off your penis. Okay, Mrs Hyde has retreated for the moment.

In other news I made Evil Editor’s competition

. Look at question five and you’ll figure it out. The only problem is I look at the whole query now and cringe. There’s one sentence that’s killing me “Jessie’s strength and dependability tempts her.” What the fuck was I thinking when I wrote that? Mills and Boon hello, meet your newest writer. I’m beating myself up enough over it so be kind.

The competition did ultimately help. In the comments there was some discussion about the term wog and the racist meaning it holds. Someone commented: According to Wikipedia, Wog can mean:

1- An offensive British slang term for people of dark skin that gained in popularity during the colonial period, possibly derrived from Golliwog (a blackfaced minstrel doll character)

2- An Australian slang term for non Anglo-Celtic Australians, usually people of Mediteranean ancestries. Originally offensive, it is now a more affectionate term, to the point that there was a popular stage show called “Wogs Out of Work”, which was followed by TV show “Acropolis Now” and movie “Wog Boy”.

3- An obsolete Australian term meaning a disease or gross insect. The replacement of terms had some overlap, with a joke recorded in 1983 being “Have you been in bed with a wog? Oh no, I’m married!”

4- Wog is the short form of polliwog, the term for a sailor who crosses the equator for the first time (it was an old term for tadpole)

5- A disparaging term used by scientologists to describe non-scientologists (synonymous with “muggle” )

6- A person who disregards propaganda and tries to equip themselves with the tools for survival (both day-to-day and wilderness survival).

For the purposes of my title definition five applies. Ultimately this competition helped because I’m going to include the definition in my query to agents outside of Australia. While the simpler thing would be to change the title (and I might do that) it’s also too hard for me. Although I’d love to come up with a title like “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.” Honestly isn’t it the most gorgeous title. But I don’t hold out much hope of that. Considering the shyte I wrote that passes as a query letter it’s fair to say that instead of talking up my novel, I talk it way, way down.

Also an update on the photo and friendship thing: it seems she did send the photos but they went missing. Today they were returned to her so she’ll re-send. Regardless of how this friendship pans out I won’t be asking her for a favour again. Despite her best efforts it’s been cock up from beginning to end because of her lack of organisation skills. So if I ever get them, I’ll be posting some pics on the blog. Keep your fingers crossed. I need all the good luck I can get.

Click here

to hear the best song in the world. Poetry in fucking motion. I’ve been haunted by it the last few days and can’t listen to it without wanting to cry.

As someone of you already read or know I bought a house in Melbourne and in about 10 weeks I shall be moving from Sydney. What you might not know is that I still have not seen this house. Friends of ours looked at it for us and negotiated the offer with the real estate agent. So I sent another friend to take photos so I could actually see the house I’d bought.

This was over a week ago. She said she was going to send the photos on Friday from her boyfriend’s computer. Friday night at 10.30pm I hadn’t received the photos and SMS’d her. She called me straight away. She’d given the memory card to her boyfriend to email and he hadn’t. She was furious and wanted to kill him. I’ve already known for a while he was a fuckwit so this was no surprise to me. I asked her to post the photos. On Monday I SMS’d checking in on her (she was having a big week as she was starting a new job) and asked about the photos. Dead silence.

Because we’ve been friends for so many years (17 years friends but we did know each other in primary school) I knew this was not a good sign. My friend has trouble dealing with conflict. As soon as there’s something unpleasant going on she sticks her head in the sand and pretends it away. So I knew that there was some sort of a fuck up with the photos.

On Wednesday night, after three days of waiting on tenterhooks for some sort of an update, I cracked it. I call it going over to the other side. I was so angry, disappointed and hurt with this friend that I was fantasising about some pretty sick and twisted revenge ideas. One of them has actually developed into a short story idea. On Thursday I got an SMS from her saying the photos were on the way. On Saturday an email from her boyfriend saying that he’s tried to email the photos, didn’t work and he’ll post them.

My husband keeps asking me to call her. Why let things drag on this long? he demands. Just call her and straighten things out. I don’t want to call her. She knows how important this is to me. The fact that she didn’t reply to my SMS has infuriated me and I find it unforgivable that knowing how important this was to me, she left me hanging without a word. Another issue is pride. I find it difficult asking people to do me favours and I feel kicked in the guts with her disregard.

At this point I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Why did she SMS me on Thursday that the photos are on the way and then I got another email from her boyfriend three days later? Were they posted Thursday or are they still not on the way? I don’t know and I don’t care. At this point I almost don’t want the photos. I want a clean break from this friendship. I’m sick of her cowardice, her inability to be upfront and her childishness. And I’m hurt. All I needed was some honesty.

My friend moved in with her fuckwit boyfriend a few weeks ago and even before this fiasco I was thinking about how this friendship was going to work. I can’t stand him and this has come from six years of interacting and attempting to socialise with him. While I don’t think it’s necessary to like one’s partner you need to be in the sort of relationship where you can still maintain connections with people your partner does not like. My friend is not like this. She defers to her fuckwit boyfriend. She has no backbone or ability to establish her autonomy. And she’s been notoriously flaky with maintaining our friendship since I’ve been in Sydney. So while this whole thing with the photos is a big thing, it’s also part of a much bigger picture.

At this point I’m waiting. I don’t have the time or space to deal with a break-up and a friendship that comes to an end is almost like a break-up with your significant other. While we’ve been friends for so many years and there is a level of knowing each other’s souls, there is also an element of nostalgia coating the ragged edges of reality. There are things that I put up with from her that nobody else could get away with, but because I know her so well and can almost read her mind, she gets a free out of jail card.

I’m not one of those people who has hundreds of friends and acquaintances. I have a small group of friends that I treasure so breaking up with someone is a huge wrench. She is irreplaceable. We lived out of each other’s pockets in high school and have helped each other become adults. She reminds me of where I came and who I am, but if we’d met today, we would never be friends. Our values and aspirations are too different and there is no way we would be able to bridge the gap. At the end of the day time will tell whether our friendship will move forward or stall, but I wonder if anyone else has faced this issue. What do you do when you grow out of your friendship? Do you keep pushing, hoping that sometime in the future you will be at the same stage again, or let it go and keep the good memories?

Amra is a very common Bosnian name. My joke is that if you throw a rock at a group of Bosnians you’ll hit a Amra. My maiden name is Halilovic which is like the Bosnian equivalent of Smith. So there are literally thousands of Amra Halilovic’s in the world. My husband’s surname is much less common but nevertheless there is another Amra Pajalic living and breathing in the world. She can continue to do so as long as she doesn’t start a web identity.

I didn’t always like my name. In primary school one teacher made my life hell by singing a song where she rhymed Amra with Camera, but since then I’ve come to terms with it. I’ve even thought it sounds pretty cool and when I imagine it on a spine of a book, I feel quite chuffed.

But now there is a new development that has made my head spin. It seems that I am an acronym. Yes. It’s true. Listed are just some of the things that it seems I now stand for:

Australian Music Retailers Association

Australian Model Railway Association

A UK regional Press representation company

Autovation 2006: The AMRA International Symposium

Alberta Mini RoadRacing Association

American Mechanical Rights Agency

American Motorcycle Racing Association

American Military Retirees Association

And my two absolute favourites:
Arizona Midget Racing Association

American Mule Racing Association

I am also a:
Jordanian castle built in the 8th century

Political party in India

Jazz bar

Irish Saint

University

Hotel

Radio Station

Movie

Cult

If only there was some way I could use some of these to sell books when I’m published. Maybe I could get one of the organisations to sponsor me? I reckon the mule and midget racing associations would be a winner.