A while ago, in Ask Your Talent, I was thinking about what you do when you've learnt your craft, done your time, are writing really well, and just can't quite get and agent or publisher to take you on. The rejectors like your work so much that they're trying to help, but what they're saying is things like "The ideas and characters are subtle in a literary way, but the writing style is very commercial." Or, alternatively, "It's quite plot-driven and the characters are lively, which doesn't sit well with your sophisticated and allusive style". And the writer howls, "Why can't I have interesting ideas and plain writing?' Or "Why should really good writing mean I can't tell a thumping good story?"

As writers, putting different things together and finding something new emerging is what we do: 'What if?' is our basic mode, and 'as if' the defining characteristic of fiction. On the other hand, the industry needs to persuade readers to part with their hard-earned cash, by reassuring them that they'll get something worth paying for, which for the most part means something which does what it says on the tin (or the book cover): a certainty.

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I met Paul and Claire last night (they are a seriously good team) to have a look at and edit (or watch them edit) the video Claire shot of the launch night of the photo book back in May. Thank you both, very much.

And here's me reading my contribution to the book (a piece of flash fiction inspired by the projected photograph).

(I'll try to post something a bit better in quality soon, or at least a bit larger.)

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I make lists. I’m a list maker. I do it to organise what is sometimes a hectic life, but I’ve also been known to do it to make myself seem busy when things are in fact quite quiet. On a quiet day or days when I’m trying to avoid something important, I tend to scribble things down on The List as I’m doing them, then cross them out straight away. An immediate sense of achievement – happy days

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'What do you mean, you'd forgotten you'd applied?' said R. I'd just I told him I'd been accepted on a two month volunteer teaching programme in Spain.



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Not this one.

I've been thinking a great deal over the past few weeks how things change(d). Really, selfishly, specifically about how much I've changed over the past few years. So I thought I'd share.

When I started out writing, many years ago, I wanted to be a decent freelance journalist. And I did ok at that. But then I started writing fiction and fell in love with it, despite - and I think this is important - not having a bloody clue what I was doing. I wrote horror at the beginning. Odd things. An awful, awful, AWFUL novel about cloning Jesus (it's true and if writing it hadn't made me a better writer I'd almost be ashamed of it). Then I discovered children's literature. And I think it was at that point that my writing changed. It got better. Actually it got good. And I was starting to be published regularly. I think that editors were prepared to put their name to what I'd produced, that they felt it was good enough, was a hugely important thing for me. That validation gave me confidence.

And then I wrote a children's book, which was published. I was an author at last. It was then that I started blogging and running workshops - doing different things. Living as a writer, or at least pretending to. I toured the book, met readers. Got to talk about writing to people who were interested in it. I was asked to start a writing group (which is still going). I grew a beard. (Actually the beard growing was an accident: I'd finished an exhausting stint of appearances and, once I'd finished I got back to writing and simply didn't shave and one day discovered I had a beard.)

The next stage, I think, could well be the most important one, and it provided me with a realisation.

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I just noticed this article in the Guardian about Philippa Gregory's venture onto twitter. The Guardian describes it as "the latest in a series of recent literary experiments on the micro-blogging service which have run the gamut from the comic to the literary".


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Via Twitter I encountered this new publishing company, Victorian Secrets, which is to print critical editions of the forgotten gems of the 19th century.

Due out in September is The Dead Man’s Message by Florence Marryat. Catherine Pope of Victorian Secrets and Victorian Geek has recently set up a new website devoted to this very interesting but neglected writer. Marryat wrote around 90 novels, split up with two husbands, became an actress and a journalist and developed an interest in spiritualism that influenced her later work. Two years before her death, she published The Blood of the Vampire, which came out around the same time as Dracula and was largely overshadowed.

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The novel I have just finished writing is narrated exclusively from one point of view. It’s not in first person, it’s in third, but I tell the story entirely via the perspective of my main character, Catherine. This is the first time I’ve tried this approach, having always previously narrated events from a variety of viewpoints.

Catherine and I have been together for nine months now and we have come to know each other pretty well. So well, in fact, that we are now almost inseparable: she’s there in my head when I’m walking the dog, when I’m chopping vegetables for the kids’ tea and even (see how intimate we are!) when I’m lying in the bath.


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There's an interesting discussion over at The Rumpus, where a blog post entitled "More Crappy News for Short Story Writers" brings us more of those quotes we short story lovers and writers have become used to hearing, from an agent writing in response to being sent a short story collection:

"Publishers don’t like to publish short story collections in general unless they are VERY high concept or by someone very strange or very famous or Indian. In the current climate, it is harder to publish even those. Some of the authors I represent have story collections I have not been able to talk their loyal publishers into publishing. I can’t in good conscience encourage you to send them to me. It will just make both of us feel bad."

What is "VERY high concept"? And... he actually said "Indian"???!!
..........

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A six tonne, 40-foot predator roared at me the other day. I could smell its meaty breath as it bore down on me, its razor-sharp teeth the size of bananas ready to slash me to pieces. OK, I may be exaggerating about the breath and the bad intentions – but I really was that close to it, even if it was just an animatronic T Rex made of steel and latex. It was part of the stunning show Walking with Dinosaurs at the O2 centre in London. Having dinosaur mad children is not essential and I urge anyone who’s been hesitating to buy a ticket straight away.
But watching these huge, realistic beasts close up got me thinking about the nature of monsters. Namely, how easy it is to start thinking they’re waiting behind corners in real life.

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