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Posture
June 5, 2014
Here’s something I’ve learned sitting at a computer for the last twenty years: sitting at a computer for the last twenty years catches up with you.
Of course, when you’re young, you don’t realise that’s going to happen. When you’re young, you’re invulnerable. I used to lounge back in a recliner, my feet up on the desk, the keyboard on my lap, angled so I could also watch the TV, which was adjacent to my computer.
The next day? Not a problem at all.
If I did it now, muscles would weld into place and I’d pay for it for days afterward.
You hear a lot about posture. And, for the most part, we ignore it. We slump at the computer. Or hunch over. Or sit cross-legged. We think nothing of it because we’re comfortable. Since our bodies aren’t complaining, surely there’s nothing wrong with these positions, is there?
But the truth is that while we’re sitting obliviously, things are happening inside our bodies. Muscles are twisting. The spine is thrown out of whack and glacially, discs are sliding. We’re not feeling these things as they’re occurring, but they are and, inevitably, there’s a tipping point. Over twenty years that one disc which has been stressed due to your head being hunched forward slides, slides, slides and starts impacting on your spinal cord. You get pins and needles in your fingers, or pain in your arm. The neck tenses to hold the disc in place. The tension draws on the muscles enveloping your skull, pulls them taut, resulting in headaches.
Measures to address these problems are stopgap. Sure, a massage is nice, and it loosens the muscles but how long do the muscles remain relaxed? Once you’re back at the computer, they tighten again. Some muscles learn to adopt that new curled position as their natural state, which then requires extensive physiotherapy to teach them to unlearn that position. If you have a disc problem, either it becomes a question of management, or – ultimately – surgery. Surgery to fix a disc problem in the neck entails going through the throat (well, actually, they shunt the throat aside, but go in through the front), pulling the disc out, and fusing the discs above and below it for stability. Sounds like fun, huh?
These issues worsen when we’re tense, and as writers – and also as editors – we tense often. People not in the industry don’t understand what it’s like to sit at a computer and, as a writer, be stuck. Be stuck? Preposterous! How could that be an issue? Because it’s frustrating. You take all that energy, all that creativity, all that emotion, and bottle it into a person until it hunches them over the computer, trying to find a release. It’s unhealthy. It’s worse as an editor when you’re working on something that’s twisting you out of shape, scrunching you up until you’re a pretzel.
A physio once told me that the human body isn’t designed for sitting, citing primitive tribes who squat when they eat, rather than sit. We’re built to roam, to hunt, to take care of ourselves. The body is built for motion, but modern living encourages us to be stationery, to be hunched over – hunchings that are growing worse as we all hunch over our smartphones and tablets.
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!
Here are some basic tips:
- apparently, sitting bolt upright is also bad for the spine, as it puts pressure on the discs. So sit as if you’re leaning back just a bit.
- get your flatscreen level with your eyes.
- if possible, find a keyboard rest that props up your keyboard on a 45 degree angle. Looking down at your keyboard is murder on your neck.
- don’t sit with one leg crossed over the other. This pulls muscles (in your back) into unnatural positions. Remember, muscles are connected – stressing one affects the others.
- get up every forty-five minutes and take a little walk around the room. Stretch.
- if whatever you’re working on is tensing you up, relax. If you insist on being tense, at least get up and be tense.
We often live like there’s no tomorrow, ignorant to the damage we’re inflicting upon ourselves. But not one of us are impervious and if we’re not careful, we will face that day when our bodies can bear the burden no longer and complain, ‘Enough! Enough!’ Unfortunately, the body’s mode of communication is usually pain.
Take care of yourself.
Nobody else will.
L.Z.
P.S. A thanks to one of assistant editors, Helen Krionas, for the suggested topic.
P.P.S. Don’t forget to vote for us in the Leader Local Grants for our Books With Wings project. You can read more about it and vote here! Please vote as it’s a worthwhile cause.
From the Heart (Guest Post by Ashley Capes)
June 2, 2014
I’ve been trying to come up with some good advice for submitting to a competition. Rather than preaching something new, I’ll instead repeat something I was once told – which is to “do everything you can to stand out.” At least, for the right reasons of course.
The first simple step as I see it, is to get a hold of the competition guidelines and make sure you follow them.
That way, the first impression you make isn’t a bad one. Simple but classic advice, and yet, it happens a bit and always saddens me. As a poet, I know the care we put into our work and the big step it can sometimes be to submit our work to a competition, so it’s a shame when a writer disqualifies their own entry with a simple oversight.
Now, more importantly – the poem itself. I hope people find these two pieces of advice useful, perhaps for any competition in any genre: 1) Surprise the reader and 2) Be authentic. Now, both of those suggestions are perhaps a touch vague as they stand and one might even be misleading at first glance, so I’d like to discuss them a little for a moment.
Surprise. With surprise it’s not about providing a twist ending or ‘shocking’ content, so much as taking the reader somewhere unexpected. Let the judge see an old thing with new eyes, experience a familiar setting with new senses, rethink established ideas and norms with your poem – whatever you write on, make it worth a second look. You’re going up against the best poems of every poet who submits, so it’s your job as a competitor to stand out from the crowd.
In terms of authenticity, the quality might be harder to describe in terms of a poetry competition. Poetry, like all art, filters through the lens of the artist so of course it’s going to have the stamp of authenticity on that level. Your world view and experiences inform your poetry. But what seems to go awry with some entries is a fear of the self – a lack of confidence, perhaps – and an urge to rely too heavily on artifice.
Instead, use your worldview. Use your experiences and present them honestly and if there’s an urge to censor yourself, resist. Censorship of poetry has to be the death of poetry – and sometimes the one who censors most is the artist. Resist the urge.
Make what you say matter to you. And this might mean that a poem is political or focus on social commentary; it can be anything so long as when you look back on the poem in ten years, you can still feel the sting of its emotion. A truly authentic poem is one where, no matter how much time passes, you still know what you were thinking when you wrote it, you still know who you were when you wrote it, and you still recognise that it mattered to you.
And, still be proud that you said something authentic about human experience, perhaps.
So there’s some rambling on submitting for the competition, hope it helps!
Ashley Capes
(N.B. from the editor: are you a fan of Busybird? Support their upcoming projects by voting for Busybird to receive the Leader Local grant here.)
A Community of Readers
May 29, 2014
If I asked you what the literacy rate in Australia is, you might respond by saying that most Australians can read well. The fact is that 46% of Australian’s do not have good enough literacy skills to do what many take for granted, such as reading a bus timetable, understanding instructions on a medicine bottle or reading the paper. This is so appalling. Australia is the so-called ‘Lucky Country’ and yet we have that many people who are disempowered because of their lack of literacy skills.
You might think, So what? Imagine a life where you are disadvantaged by not being able to read. This affects chances of employment as well as so many other things. Being able to read is directly related to a sense of good self-esteem. A community of readers is empowered and resilient.
Busybird Publishing is all about books – just in case you hadn’t noticed. Our mission is to find a way to make books special in people’s lives no matter what their situation is. We believe that the sharing of books is very important to the community because the sharing of stories is a basic human need.
Part of our mission, apart from helping people publish their stories, is to find ways to get books into people’s hands. It’s not a new idea. It’s not revolutionary. In fact it is so basic. But if it were happening everywhere, there would not be these horrendous statistics.
In order to start making this mission a reality, we are starting at the ground roots level. We plan to build a mini library (in the shape of a birdhouse, of course) that will live out the front of the Busybird studio and house free books. This will act as a meeting point for a book exchange. So if you want a book, you need to put a book in. It is hoped that this idea will grow in our community, then branch out in to others and then on to regional area where getting books is harder.
To this end, we have applied for a community grant with Leader Newspaper. It will still happen without a grant but it will take longer. We’d love to hear of other ideas of how we can make changes in the community in terms of literacy, so pop in to our studio or email us if you have any.
Look out for voting at http://www.leaderlocalgrants.com.au to help us get this project off the ground.
Blaise van Hecke
Five Small Tips for Short Stories (Guest Post by Emilie Collyer)
May 27, 2014
You have written a short story. The feeling of achievement is warm and tingly. You’re ready to launch this wee creature into the world.
Pause for a moment. Take a breath before you hit ‘send’.
While we’d all love our first drafts to be perfect they almost never are. Here are five small tips I’ve learned (often the hard way) about ensuring your story is the best it can be.
1. Leave time
After finishing your draft leave it alone, for a few days at least, preferably longer. Some stories develop over months. When you re-visit you need to switch from ‘pure writer’ mode to ‘writer/reader’ mode. Try – and it’s very hard – to read your story as a reader.
Read with care but with your critical faculties switched on. If any parts leap out as false, clunky or dull, mark them. Your instincts are probably right.
2. Get an outside eye
You know what you want to say with your story and think it is crystal clear. But remember the reader is not inside your head. The only way to know what’s actually coming across on the page is for someone who is not you to read the work.
Ask a writer or reader you respect and who isn’t scared to offer constructive criticism. Having someone overly worried about hurting your feelings won’t make you a better writer. Ask them to mark parts they love and parts that confuse them or they don’t ‘believe’ (i.e. don’t seem to be true to the world you have created).
Be prepared to make some changes after this stage. Even if you feel what you’ve written is fully finished, this feedback may help you discover you’ve got more revision to do.
3. Use feedback to engage more fully with your work
Learning what to do with feedback is a real skill that takes a long time to develop. Some of us overreact – changing every word. Others are stubborn, refusing to budge on anything. The answer is somewhere in between.
If an intelligent reader queries a part of your story, they are usually right that something is awry. They are not so often right about how to fix it. You must learn to use your own judgement. It’s a challenging but exciting process. It demands that we ask of ourselves: what is at the heart of my story? Does every word support that premise?
4. Send out with care
Only send out work you feel is as good as you can get it. Polish your words, take care with grammar, spelling and structure. Even then, sometimes a story just isn’t ready. The ideas are strong but the language isn’t singing. You know your character but haven’t yet found the heart of the story. Don’t send that one out. Not yet. There will be plenty more opportunities and the extra few weeks or months may reveal a deeper truth to the story.
5. Embrace failure
Not every story is a success. Some are ‘learning stories’ – we’re trying a new technique, a different genre, a shift in how we write. They are equally as valuable. Every piece of writing adds to our experience. Old drafts and failed stories are like compost. Even though they sometimes smell kind of whiffy they’re essential for growth.
The scale of a short story means we can write a lot of them and go through this process again and again. The more you do it the better you get. Like an athlete or a musician, becoming a good writer takes many years and much dedication. And while the flush of first draft creativity is intoxicating, the rewards of reflection and revision are rich and will help you gain maturity and confidence in your craft.
Emilie Collyer
The Quality of Writing
May 22, 2014
Well, where do I start?
I’m Erin, an editorial intern at Busybird Publishing and I’m writing my first blog. Ever.
Why did I make the decision to become an editor in the first place? Writing and editing go hand in hand and without an editor to circle, analyse and fix up a piece of written work it may never be published or be deemed worth publishing.
The importance of writers editing their own work became evident when I was part of the exciting responsibility of choosing which [untitled] short story submissions would make the shortlist for this year’s short story competition.
Under the direction of Les, we were told that the submission (for the competition) had to be worthy of going to print as is. This relies heavily on the writer performing his or her additional role as an editor in bringing their work up to an acceptable standard of publication, which can present critical challenges for the writer and exemplifies the crucial importance of an editor’s role in the publishing process.
Writers bear a huge burden in that they are expected to be able to both write and edit competently, which is unfair when a competition such as the [untitled] short story competition is meant to expose and showcase writing talent rather than how correctly they place full stops and commas in a story. I can see why our selection process had to be cut so finely due to the enormous wealth of talented writers and how many submissions there were. But not every writer is an editor, or wants to be. This is where I am very sympathetic towards upcoming writers, as it must make their chances of ever getting read or published feel like a futile pursuit.
I understand that life is not fair and the stories are written for the purposes of competition, which means that a cutthroat selection process must be applied so that the best short story wins. I became an editor so that I would have the opportunity to read through and edit works to make them ready for publication and the opportunity to read through these short stories has been stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable.
It made me both question my position as an editor and reaffirm my role and how important editors are in working with writers, rather than against them, in editing their work to a point where they can be published and read by an audience which will appreciate their talent and the subject matter they choose to write on. Editors relish the opportunity to help written work achieve its full potential, whether they are working within a publishing house or operating on a freelance basis.
Unfortunately, short stories (for the competition) are judged not only by the quality of their writing but how well that writing is coupled with a brilliant edit. If young writers today want to have any chance of succeeding in the fiercely competitive world of publishing they must be prepared to write, rewrite and proofread their work to a standard where the work can be read clearly and easily, or even go the extra mile and hire an editor to edit their work first before anyone else reads it.
Erin Dite