Book Launch Preview #1 - Jessica Bell & Dear Reflection

What are some topics that are dealt with in Dear Reflection? 

Growing up with musicians for parents
Dealing with non-clinical depression
Dealing with a parent with an iatrogenic illness (chronic pain, panic attacks, addiction, drug withdrawal, depression and anxiety)
Bullying, losing one’s virginity to rape and its emotional effects
Teenage/Young adult binge-drinking
Self-destructive behaviour as a means of escape
Music / Performing live / Songwriting



Who might be interested in reading Dear Reflection?

People who have cared for sick parents as children and are forced into an adult role very early in life.

When is the book set?

Primarily in the 80s and 90s.

Where is the book set?

In three places:

Melbourne, Australia

Ithaca, Greece

Athens, Greece

Why did you write this memoir?

Though there are many reasons, one of them was to expose childhood wounds and show that healing is possible.

How did it feel to design your own book cover?

Amazing! And it was absolute fate to find that photograph of myself, at the last minute, too. I discovered it in one my old photo albums while I was gathering photos for my social media promo. I really didn’t plan it. (You can go on Facebook and search for #DearReflectionFlashback to see my promo efforts so far.)

Extract from Dear Reflection

I needed to pee. It was 1985, and I was four. It would be the first time I remember running from emotional struggle by doing something stupid.

My heart beat in my throat, and I trembled in the darkness of my peach-coloured bedroom at 80 Edwin Street, Heidelberg Heights, in Melbourne, Australia­—the red brick house with the crooked mailbox and untamed pink and orange rose bushes I shared with my parents until I turned twenty.

I opened my bedroom door a teeny-tiny crack. The freezing air from the corridor slipped through and gave me goose bumps. I imagined the icy cold floor stinging my feet as I navigated the hall, the kitchen, the glasshouse, past the piano, to get to the toilet, and then slamming the glossy pink door to stop the Heidel Monsters from getting in.

I decided against it and pissed in the corner of my bedroom.

I watched the pee soak into the fibres of the mud-stained ash-grey carpet, then wiped my chishy with the corner of a pillow and placed it on top of the smelly puddle. I returned to bed and wrapped myself in my feather down doona, shivering until I warmed.

The next day, when my mother, Erika Bach, and stepfather, Demetri Vlass, were preoccupied with recording their song ideas onto their four-track mixer in the music room, they didn’t notice a thing. I realized how much I could get away with without anyone ever knowing how I truly felt.

It was a triumph.

A miracle.

My bedroom door wasn’t transparent, and my mother didn’t really ‘have eyes in the back of her head.’ There was no real reason to hide other than my own irrational fear of feeling something that could potentially be a challenge to deal with. But it felt powerful to hide. The thrill of obtaining such privacy would soon develop into a cold, selfish, heartless reflection I believed protected me.

She persuaded me to run.

Her voice grew more authoritative until she became ‘another me’—a decision maker who knew ‘best.’

She didn’t.


Order the book HERE

Creative Spark Week 7 - Polish Your Prose

Polish Your Prose by Tightening Descriptions Exercise
by Jessica Bell

Too much description and you risk boring your reader. Too little description and your reader has no environment in which to visualize your characters. But it really is a fine line, and depends so much on personal taste.
Being a poet as well as a novelist, I adore description. And I have to admit, I go overboard sometimes. But my “description binges” are always calculated. And more often than not, I cut them down to at least half the original length. There are two ways you can do this. I suggest you implement both for variety of pace.

1. Identify which parts of your book are purely “decorative” and/or have little or no relevance to your setting and plot and evaluate how important they are to you. You don’t need to get rid of them all. Just find a balance you’re comfortable with. Trust your instincts. And I say don’t take that “kill your darlings” stuff too seriously. If everyone killed all their darlings, they’d have no family left.

2. Extract a big chunk of description and break it down into rational stand-alone segments or sentences. Then incorporate them into some action.

Look at SEGMENT No.1 below, for instance. Here we have an example of action, an example of description, and an example of the same piece of action and description combined:

SEGMENT No.1
Action:
“I can’t believe Selma’s gone.” John runs his fingertips along the fence before opening the gate.

Isolated segment of description:
Rusty wire fencing borders the abandoned paddock. The gate is squeaky. It always has been. Selma claimed it kept her alert to trespassers and refused to oil the hinges.

Description segment added to action: 

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” John runs his fingertips along the rusty wire fencing that borders the abandoned paddock. He opens the gate. It squeaks like it always has. He’s reminded of Selma’s refusal to oil the hinges. She said it kept her alert to trespassers.

The final example does several things. There is action. There is back story and character info on Selma and there is description.

In the grand scheme of things, the changes you choose to make are your choices. So if you want lots of description, and believe it deserves to be there, so be it. But, I urge you, please don’t go on and on for pages about the beauty of Mother Nature in spring. Your readers will just stop reading if the action is interrupted for more than a page. Some say that the limit is two paragraphs, but if, like me, you’re a literary author, I think you can get away with one page. At the very most. And I’m talking a book page, not a manuscript page, and that should add up to, on average, about 250 words.

So, as well as cutting your description to the level you feel comfortable with, and peppering it throughout the action, how else do you think you can go about polishing it?

Don’t overuse adjectives and use more strong verbs. The key word here is “overuse.” I’m not saying never use adjectives. I’m just saying your writing will be stronger with moderate usage.

Take a look at SEGMENT No.2 below. Here we have a weak example of description, with lots of adjectives, and a strong example of description using a moderate amount of adjectives and strong verbs.

SEGMENT No.2
Weak example:
The darkness of the thick grey low-hanging clouds made the massive decorative rocks in our backyard look like animated gravestone-giants.


Strong example:
The thick clouds hung low and shadowed our backyard. The decorative rocks doubled in size and morphed into gravestone-giants.

Can you see how the strong verbs in the second example help to eliminate the need for all the adjectives in the first one?

Now it’s your turn.

Combine the following texts so that the description is peppered throughout the dialogue and it uses less adjectives and more strong verbs.

Patti Smith begins a Jimi Hendrix cover on clarinet. A tragic mellow vibrato goes through Lykabettus Theatre like a sad wilting willow. The crowd is quiet and still. The guitarist’s jazz scales moves the clarinet’s tune like warm approaching rain. The rhythm guitar sounds like a heartbeat, and the pounding makes the crowd become a big loud mess of chaos. Patti puts the clarinet down, comes over to the microphone and sings in her deep, gruff, aching voice, If you can just / get your / mind together … The slow four/four beat of the guitar and Patti’s voice is like quaking earth. It moves through my legs, body, arms, making my throat tight. Synchronic drums, bass and distorted guitar move alongside the rhythm on the beat, creating an eruption of sundry emotion within me that makes cold and awestruck tears fall down my cheeks.

“Have you ever seen Patti Smith live before?” I said.

“Nah. This is my first time. I’m not entirely impressed yet,” he said.

“What? How can you not be impressed? She’s an icon; a genius.”

“Yeah, but, you know. I guess I’m just not as into it as you.”

“You should just close your eyes and listen. Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That. Shh ... Feel it.”


Need more self-editing advice? Why don’t you check out Jessica Bell’s editing guide: Polish Your Fiction: A Quick & Easy Self-Editing Guide.

Jessica Bell is an Australian award-winning author, writing and publishing coach, and graphic designer who lives in Athens, Greece. In addition to her novels and poetry collections, and her bestselling Writing in a Nutshell series, she has published a variety of works online and in literary journals, including Writer’s Digest.
In addition to the above, she is the Co-Founder and Publisher of Vine Leaves Literary Journal & Press, a singer/songwriter/guitarist, a voice-over actor, and a freelance editor and writer for English Language Teaching publishers worldwide such as MacMillan Education and Education First. She is also the coordinator of the Writing Day Workshops which take place throughout the United States on a regular basis.
Before all this she was just a young woman with a “useless” Bachelor of Arts degree and a waitressing job.

All images courtesy of Julie Lewis