I’ve just returned from the Boyup Brook Book Bonanza armed with enthusiasm and a wealth of knowledge and new ideas.
For those of you who love to write, I thought I’d devote a few blogs to sharing what I’ve learned.

The first thing I want to talk about is probably the hardest skill to maintain. And that skill is writing freely without engaging the internal critic.

It’s something we all know, but also what we all forget as we learn about the importance of plotting, developing characters, researching and “showing, not telling” the reader what is happening in our stories.

Dr Alan Hancock, a teacher and freelance writer, was the guest speaker at the literary dinner during the Book Bonanza. It was Alan who threw out the idea to us that all these things - plotting, working on sentence structure, spending hours on drawing up our characters - didn’t need to happen. Of far more importance is the ability to run with an idea from beginning to end.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of us around the dinner table were thinking, “who is this guy?” because as writers, we know how important all these things are in creating good writing. But he clarified his message by asking us the following question: “If I asked you to tell me what you’re thinking right now, would you do it, and if not, why?” In effect, he was showing us how we restrain ourselves constantly, evaluate what we are thinking, edit it and reconstruct it before we dare to speak it. In doing this, we block our ideas and our creativity.

It’s the same with our writing. How many times have you had a great idea, then written the first sentence, stopped, re-read it, deleted it, then sat staring at the computer screen thinking, “maybe that wasn’t such a good idea”? It’s true, it happens all the time. The critic in our heads has risen from its slumber to run a red line through our work and deem it stupid or badly written or dull.

Alan wasn’t saying never to use all the skills and techniques we have in our writer’s kit to produce brilliant work. What he’s saying is to let the ideas and words flow freely in the first writing. Once the piece is written, then the editing begins. If we continually second-guess ourselves and squash an idea, we will lose that flow of ideas.

As I reflected on all this, I realised that this is the way I write. . I always run with ideas that spring into my mind, and most of them happen at night. Even if the idea sounds basic, or as though it is going nowhere, I work on it anyway. In fact, my first novel, “Seeing Dogs” came about in this way. I hadn’t done any plot lines or character studies. I’d just written the whole thing. Then I went back over it and saw with surprise that it had a good plot and the characters were distinctive. Needless to say, it required a good edit before I could send it off to a publisher, but at least the story was there.

So my goal from here on in is to continue that style of writing, to allow more ideas to take root in my brain. Let’s hope it works! As a writer, I need all the ideas I can muster.

Today I attended the Smarter Than Smoking Young Women’s Breakfast put together by Women’s Sport West. The aim of the event was to provide information and support to school girls from low socio-economic backgrounds on the importance of a good diet and the value of getting involved in sport. About eight schools came along, and were supported by female athletes. My role was to both give the inspirational speech and sit on a panel of four athletes to answer the girls’ questions.

The morning ran smoothly and was a huge success. The MC was entertaining and interacted well with the girls. The food was generous - cereals, yogurts, fruit, toast, nuts and health bars - in ample supply, donated by the sponsors. There were prizes for quizzes on facts about smoking - some of them which startled me, ie did you know there are 4,000 chemicals in tobacco? - and the girls all left with a show bag.

Once again, whenever I’m in the presence of teenagers, I experienced a sense of awe. These girls asked such intelligent questions and really participated in the event. Lots of them wanted photos and autographs. I think many of them play sport already, and I hope they continue. I look back on what I was like as a teenager and see all my flaws so clearly. Today’s kids just seem to be different, somehow.

The taxi driver who picked me up came in time to see the girls leaving, heading for school. He said they all had huge smiles on their faces. Hearing something like that makes my day. Well done Women’s Sport West.

In all the research I’ve done on the art of public speaking, one important factor has always stood out - be prepared for anything to go wrong. Speakers are advised to imagine all the technological things that go awry - like lap tops and projectors failing, lights suddenly going out etc - as well as things like getting a bad introduction, dealing with a heckler, having a blank “senior’s” moment. You end up with a long list of what could go wrong, for which you need to find solutions so that absolutely nothing fazes you on the day.

As a blind public speaker, I think I’ve had to come up with disability-specific things that could challenge me on the day.

I must admit, I haven’t had a lot of these over my time as a speaker. The last one I remember was about three years ago when my guide dog and I almost got mashed in a revolving door as we entered the venue where I was addressing about two hundred senior staff members. The person escorting me to the venue didn’t think to tell me we were going through a revolving door until we were in it. Just in time, I realised that my dog would be crushed between the edge of one of the winged doors and the wall, so I did the only thing I could. I screamed, dropped Lucy’s lead and prayed. Luckily, Lucy backed up quickly and escaped the inevitable. I was so shaken afterwards, that I could have used a stiff drink. Instead, I had to pull myself together, focus and do my talk as though there had been no near death experience fifteen minutes before.

Well, this week the gods decided I needed to be tested again on my ability to rise above the disability challenges of public speaking. I was addressing a group of business professionals when I had my most embarrassing moment. Before the event started, I was being shown to my seat at a table to enjoy a lovely breakfast, when I did the dumbest thing. I felt my jacket hanging on the back of my chair, didn’t check which way the chair was facing, decided it was facing me, so turned and sat down. Needless to say, I found myself on the floor. The room went deadly quiet. No-one knew what to say, do or probably, where to look.

I went straight into damage control. I didn’t want these people to think that all blind people miss their chairs when they go to sit down. So I made a joke of it, saying ‘the problem is that I keep forgetting I can’t see!’, and ‘I’ve never done that before!’. Now, believe it or not, this became a useful lead in to my presentation. I used it to put people at their ease, so that they could see I laugh at myself.

It worked well, and I had a great presentation. In fact, I found this group - Perth Business Swap - such a knowledgeable, professional and ecclectic business network, that I am thinking of joining them.

So falling down on the job isn’t always a bad thing!

I’ve been tapping away on my keyboard, working on my young adult novel. Just finished chapter 12. Phew! I’m already up to about 22,000 words. I start to wonder how the finished and polished version will be met by the publishing world.

Then I read one of my children’s writers’ ezines that pop into my inbox on a regular basis. There’s a fascinating link to a blog by a children’s book editor. The blog is about how to read or interpret rejection letters. Well, I think, this will be telling. Straight from the horse’s mouth, it has to be illuminating.

And, yes, I suppose it is. In The 8 Rules of Rejections this anonymous editor tells us in no uncertain terms, that all rejection letters are meaningless!

Okay, that’s good news, I agree. Of course all these publishers who’ve turned down my manuscripts are wrong. Maybe they haven’t even read them. But what about the lovely rejection letter from Penguin that told me not to give up, that my manuscript showed real promise? Could this be classified as a personal note, a piece of constructive or specific advice? I think so, and I’ll believe it.

But as for the rest of my rejection letters - well, they were all wrong. And that’s my mantra for the day.

Sean McManus sent a speedy reply to my email about both not being able to comment on his blog, and about inaccessible web sites. I also told him about Google Analytics, a great tool to provide feedback on visitors to your web site, but inaccessible to blind users. Here’s his response, printed with his permission.

Hi Janet

Thanks for your email. I’m sorry to hear about the problem with the comment validation. I’ve switched it off across the whole blog so that it does not become a barrier to people commenting in future.

I wonder whether you might be prepared to try to post your comment again please? I’d love to include your comments on the blog and respond to them publicly, and have them correctly attributed to you. If you don’t have time, I’ll post them myself and credit you and respond to them there.

Here’s my response:

I find it incredible that people are unwilling to make small changes to enable everyone to have equal access to technology, particularly when asked to do so by someone who is blind and who can explain the problem and demonstrate why it’s important. Google Analytics is a good example of the new wave of sites that use AJAX technologies to update the page without refreshing it. These sites cause massive accessibility problems for people with a range of different needs. People using screen magnifiers often can’t see what’s been updated because it’s outside the part they’re viewing. People using screenreaders have great difficulties because they’re using a linear interface to access content that could be changing anywhere along the line. The site is highly dependent

There is a misconception that making an accessible site means compromising on its design. But there’s no reason why Google Analytics couldn’t include a more accessible table output, or the option to download an accessible spreadsheet. Indeed, there is already an option to download a spreadsheet and text format report, only the link to do so uses javascript (inaccessible) and seems to be buried in lots of other links (inaccessible). There’s no reason why sites like Tadalist and Twitter can’t provide simple forms-based versions of their content either so that they can be used on all HTML-compliant devices. It’s just that designers don’t take it seriously enough. I’m particularly disappointed in Google (which also owns blogger) because they have enough smart people and resources to get it right, if only they considered it a priority.

Thanks again for your input, Janet.
Best regards
Sean

Note from Janet: Thanks to Publicityship I can access a small amount of the information provided by Google Analytics in the form of a table. Publicityship set up my web sites for me.

I stumbled across a much needed advocate for the development of accessible web sites to people with disabilities.
Sean McManus is a UK business and technology writer. He talks about how simple it is to make web sites easy to use for people who read using screen readers, or who need to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. He believes the reason there are so many sites that cannot be navigated by people with disabilities is due to the laziness of the designer.

I can relate to this totally, and I don’t know why I haven’t blogged about it before. One classic example for me is recent correspondence I’ve had with a professional writing organisation who “improved” their web site last year to make it completely useless to me. I pay membership fees to this group, and have explained to them how important it is for me to be able to use their site. I’ve sent them lots of information on how to make changes and therefore remove the obstacles to my access. But all I get in return is comments like: ‘We’ll do our best, but we can’t guarantee anything’, and ‘You can always send us an email with your question and we’ll do the research and get back to you’. Not good enough, but I’m getting nowhere. And the sad fact of the matter is that the Disability Discrimination Act can’t do anything to make them change their site for me.
And so I’m missing out on - I dont’ know what, because I can’t read the site!

I had a similar situation with another professional group who responded immediately to my request to put text labels on their graphics so that I could use their site. In one day, the site had been changed. It was fantastic.

It’s hard to understand why designers don’t see our dilemma. Why can’t people with disabilities have the same access to the world wide web as everyone else? It’s so simple, really. I wonder how they would feel if they were in our shoes.

On a funny note, I tried to post a comment on Sean’s blog. He uses blogger.com. They have one of those much-loved visual verification features where you have to read letters in a picture in order to post a comment. Yes, there was a “listen to the letters” link, but guess what? It doesn’t work! I’ve often found that on blogger.com blogs, and have given up trying to post my comment, because I’ve already wasted a lot of time. But I’ve emailed Sean to let him know. I’m sure he will be concerned enough to maybe do something. Here’s hoping.