Why rejections shouldn't matter

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Any writer submitting her work for publication is supposed to know which genre tick-box it fits. Lucky for me, the rules aren’t so rigid for short stories, as I’ve got a fair few wacky ones I’m not sure how to categorise.

All fiction asks readers to suspend disbelief to a certain extent; slipstream, as I’m choosing to interpret it, asks them to go a step further, not only to care about made-up characters as if they were real people, but to accept a situation where a single law of physics or history or biology has been turned on its head. By my reckoning, The Time Traveler’s Wife meets slipstream criteria, as does Never Let Me Go, both novels where critics have disagreed over genre. After all, we can’t slip physically back and forth in time to revisit different versions of ourselves (although we all do that in our minds). And, the demonisation of the poor and disadvantaged notwithstanding, people aren’t cloned simply to furnish body parts for the elite.

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Published at the beginning of 2013, The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz is a gem of a book about psychoanalysis. Heavy with insight into the human condition while light on the jargon, it’s a most-read for any thoughtful individual, but I’m here to argue its particular value for readers and writers of fiction. If you like stories, I think you’ll be interested in these, and if you’re engaged in producing your own fiction, there’s as much to learn from these tales from the therapist’s couch as from any creative writing textbook. Here’s why:

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One of the challenges of a big writing project is finding a voice for it. I've blogged about what voice is here, but for now, the first question, of course, is the narrator is a character in the story, an internal narrator, or the story is told by an external narrator.

In my post 17 Questions to Ask Your Novel, the first three go a long way to forming how the narrator tells the story, which is what Voice is all about.

Who is telling this story?
Why are they telling it?
Where do they stand in time and space, relative to the events and settings they're narrating?

Either way, the voice of the narrative will be formed by who the narrator is, and so by your thinking about characterisation-in-action. But even when you have found a voice for the narrative, how do you keep it strong, and consistent, in the long haul? Characters change - change is the motor of storytelling - but how do you make sure that the voice or voices change convincingly, and don't just lapse into the bland default that you've taken such trouble to get away from?

So here are some specific questions to ask yourself about the voice/voices of your story. They apply to narrative but also to dialogue, and to any kind of novel but also to creative non-fiction such as memoir and travel writing. You could use them to focus your ears towards hearing the voices before you start the first draft, but they're equally useful - perhaps more so - diagnostically, later in your work, when you're beset by doubt, or get feedback that the voices aren't working.

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It's that time of year again, isn't it? The time for well-intentioned resolutions which may or may not last until the end of January. I've given a lot of thought to my creative writing resolution. It's simple and it's going to be tough...

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Back in the summer, I had occasion to take the bus – not something I do very often and I’m acutely aware of my limitations in that regard. (How assertively do I stick my arm out for the bus to stop? Do I have to have the right change? Why don’t the passengers have seat belts?) This time, the bus stopped at my request and I paid my fare without incident, then looked down the aisle for somewhere to sit. It was rush hour and all I could see were pairs of commuters locked into their own worlds of music or text messaging on their phones. As I was resigning myself to having to stand for the next half-hour, swaying with each turn of the wheel, a boy stood up to offer me his seat. At more or less the same time, I spotted a vacancy towards the back, so I thanked the boy and made my way towards it.

I was surprised by the young man’s offer, and somewhat amused, wondering what had evoked it. Did he see me as old and doddery? Okay, I’m past fifty, but hopefully I’ve got a few more years in me yet. I might have grey hair but, in a certain light if I’m wearing a hat (which, admittedly I wasn’t), I look like a teenaged boy, only without the pimples. Yet I wasn’t offended. I don’t mind being an unflattering stereotype if it elicits acts of generosity and politeness.

I was reminded of this incident on reading a lovely article by Penelope Lively on turning eighty. Amid the aches and pains and indignities, she finds plenty of consolation:

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What’s left of the Christmas narrative once you’ve given up on Santa and the divinity of the Baby Jesus, when you don’t eat turkey and there’s no magic left in buying gifts for friends and family already drowning in possessions? Well, quite a lot as it happens because, stripped of the tackiness and tinsel, Christmas is a celebration of our interdependence and connectedness.

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Have you ever stamped on a good idea, told yourself I can’t write that, what will people think? It’s hard enough being a writer without censoring your thoughts before you can even get them down on the page or screen, and your prose is likely to suffer when you’re busy trying not to offend the judge that sits in your head. But shaking off these inhibitions isn’t always easy, especially when they stem from our childhood notions of what’s right and wrong. That’s why I love this quote from Paul Theroux via Thought Catalog:

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Aspiring writers are sometimes paralysed by the fear that they'll be using other people's ideas, words, stories, characters. It might be the simple desire to behave ethically, and a fear of outright plagiarism or even of being sued for breach of copyright. Or it might a more internal sense that your writing will be inauthentic, second-hand, second-rate, if it has whispers of someone else's work in among your lines.

It's an understandable worry, not least because our Western tradition of art lays such stress on originality. And yes, outright plagiarism does matter ethically, as breach of copyright matters legally (though I'm always surprised by how many writers don't understand the difference).

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