The try-on scene is surely completely played out now - the fact that it's speeded up here seems to hint at that. What we could do with is more writing class scenes. Besides, it would make much more sense, as she doesn't mind the age gap, for aspiring writer Kate to settle for octogenarian Mike. At least they'd have something in common.


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I subscribe to Literary Review; if you don’t, you should. The writing is sparkling and I’ve learnt more about the yays and nays of how to knock up a novel from their reviewers than from many of the how-to books crowded on my shelves. Much of LR covers non-fiction books which can lead you down interesting research paths for fiction. Even reading the reviews can throw up ideas for stories. The only danger is that you spend all your money ordering sacks of books using the readers' offer. Well, that’s my review of Literary Review, but this post is not about that: it’s inspired by LR in a different way.


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I've had a lovely week (what day is it today?) travelling around with J, from London to Cambridge, cross country to Cornwall and the gorgeous and organic Bangors B&B which ticked every "perfect B&B" box, from the views to the food, the fabulously friendly proprietors to the 3-week old kittens (missing them terribly). We are now in the Brecon Beacons, which is absolutely stunning, and a surprise is planned for tonight, can't tell you anything about that yet.

Internet access has been sporadic and brief, snatches here and there, but to my delight when I logged on a few days ago, I have had a poem accepted by Contrary magazine, a (paying) online literary journal I greatly admire. This is an enormous thrill, mainly because I have only been writing poetry for a few months and frankly had no idea if I was being utterly presumptious in calling it "poetry" at all. An acceptance by a poetry editor tells me that maybe I am allowed to call it that!

So, a problem. On my website, my tagline is:

"Tania Hershman. I write. Stories."
...

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Everywhere you go, you hear it. ‘Oh, we can’t sell literary fiction’ (from publishers). ‘Oh, publishers won’t take literary fiction’ (from agents). ‘The panel ended up with a list they described as “page-turning” and “readable”. According to Portillo: “We have brought you fun”’ (from a newspaper article about the 2009 Booker Prize panel of judges).

It’s enough to drive the thinking publisher insane. On the Two Ravens Press blog (http://tworavenspress.wordpress.com/) we often have a bit of a rant at the ‘dumbing down’ of fiction. Not that David and I believe in any way that a work of fiction has to be deeply literary in order to be worthwhile: I enjoy a whopping good story as much as anyone. It’s just that we get more and more desperate as, with every year that passes by, the less possible it is to find anything different and challenging to read on the bookshelves of most retail outlets. I have to admit that I get very bored with the kind of very carefully crafted novel (whose author has obviously devoured and internalised every page of whatever ‘How to Write a Blockbuster’ manual is hot today) that pushes all the right buttons but has nothing interesting to say. The truth is that we get that kind of novel submitted to us all the time, and we almost always turn it down. We don’t want a carefully crafted piece of work that’s carefully crafted to be like most every other novel out there today: we want something different, something that challenges us, something that makes us look at the world in a different way. We want to publish writers who take chances with language, chances with structure. Who aren’t afraid to write from the heart rather than to write to a formula. As our ‘publishing manifesto’ (see the ‘About Us’ page of our website) says: ‘Everything that we publish, we publish with passion. We love each of our books. They say something about the author, they say something about us and they say something about the time and the place they were born into. Each book is a person we like being around. Because each, in its own way, fights back against formulas and homogenization, against the analgesic washing-out of colour that threatens to fade our bright thoughts.’



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I am an international woman of mystery.
Oh alright, I’m not an international woman of mystery at all but I’ve always fancied being one, whatever the job entails. The truth is, I’m a complete blabber mouth in most areas of my life.
Except for one.
I’ve somehow managed to keep the whole writing thing fairly quiet from many people in my personal and professional life. The sharp-eyed may notice that I’m the only person on this blog who doesn’t use their full name. I thought long and hard about this when Samantha was setting it up. My ‘day job’ is as a magazine journalist and it struck me that it might not be a great idea to have all my thoughts and insecurities about the much-more-important-but-thus-far-without-visible-success side of things up here for all to see. Those feature editor types are no strangers to Google when they’re about to commission someone.
Obviously there is a picture with my biography, but it is quite old [and it was taken in the days before the Witness Protection Programme….but that’s another story]

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'You should wear gloves when you hold that', advised R, after I read out a couple of chilly extracts.

Surviving in extreme situations, the nature of marriage, cold-war politics and the psychology of serial killers are just a few of the issues that make this a good reading group choice. It's the quality and intensity of the writing, though, that keeps you reading.


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Over on Radio 3 they're knee-deep in Haydn at the moment, it being his bicentenary and all. In his lifetime he was considered the greatest composer in Europe, the kind of accolade which seems to end in plummeting stock once someone's heirs begin to have their Oedipal way (cf Mendelssohn - another revelation of this year of anniversaries - being murdered by Wagner). But not any longer: Haydn's risen again in critical esteem since the 70s, when I was told that if it sounded like Mozart, but was duller and you didn't recognise it, then it was Haydn. And of course art is art and craft is craft, so there's much for a writer to chew on in what's being said about a composer of consummate craftsmanship, erudition and humour. Ages ago, in Brainy and Sexy, I was brooding on how all fiction balances new-and-strange with familiar, and how seeing it that way abolishes the gap between the Calvinists who preach that only the painfully difficult can defend us from the vulgar pollution of likeability, and the equally tedious Philistines who argue that anything not instantly likeable is so much showing-off and snobbery. So here's the fortepianist Robert Levin, contrasting the high Baroque of Bach (first prelude of the Forty-Eight) with Haydn's classicism:

it's very demanding of the audience because Bach does nothing to help you fit which chords belong to one sentence and which to another. You listen to the succession and decide where to breathe... he's not helping you by making things regular. Whereas a composer like Haydn... maximum clarity... give[s] the listener a sense of where he or she happens to be at that moment... then you can constantly predict what's going to happen... and be astonished, delighted and confounded if once in a while you don't get what you expect. Haydn is the master of masters of feeding you just enough material that you think "- maybe - maybe not - "

In other words, just because we go on and on about what's new ("fresh", as the book trade so often calls it, which always makes me think of lettuce), doesn't mean that new is the only thing which matters in writing.

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I'm not one for re-reading books. As a rule I just don't do it. And I'm not sure I should; there are loads and loads of books I've not read and want to, and so little time.

But recently, this past week, I've re-read a few. I don't know why, it's not been a conscious decision. Maybe it's because I've been feeling out of sorts and a bit sorry for myself; maybe it's because I've been busy with writing jobs that haven't involved any actual writing; maybe it's training for the writing I'm going to be doing; or maybe it's serendipity. Don't know. But the point is, I have. I re-read Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and a load of Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret stories. And it's been a wonderful and warming experience. And not just seeing things with fresh eyes, noticing things that'd slipped by me on first readings. More it's reminded me WHY I loved them the first time round; why I love stories.

So, in the spirit of inclusion and sharing (and hoping for recommendations): what books would you re-read, and why?

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