As an experiment, I'm writing a story which I have no intention of publishing. No-one else will read it. I wont even post it on here. This is simply for my own enjoyment. It’s not a secret diary, not an exercise or ‘morning pages’. It’s not the first draft of something I’ll turn into a novel (although I'd never rule that out). Just pure self indulgence.

I started just a few days ago, so it’s still in the early stages, because I wondered if I could shake off my inner censor/editor; the will-they-like-it restraints we impose on ourselves when we’re writing for an audience.

Does anyone else do this?

Dee

Yes, but I increasingly use this as a tool for finding out what I might want to write about next- so a short story say, in the first person might turn into an abstract piece of theatre, but the lack on the reader/audience awareness is precisely what makes me find what I really want to write about. It's hard to escape that internal censor tho isn't it?

No, but it's an interesting idea. Do you find that what others will think affects your decisions as you write?
Or does it depend on whether they see it in the middle, or after it's basically finished? And when does learning from the judgement of others stop, and pleasing an audience start? I'd love to know what conclusions you come to.

The people on my Masters were open-minded enough that I didn't really think about what they'd like while writing, only whether they'd think whether I'd done what I was trying to do well enough. That's pretty close to how I look at my work myself, I would have said. On the other hand, you can get badly muddled asking friends and other non-writers. Someone started a thread here recently because a friend had taken against a story because the MC was having an affair with a married man. I think the consensus was that it said more about the friend than the story, but without WW to back you up I can imagine meekly thinking, 'Oh, dear, I won't then.'

But going back to your original idea, I do think we all get too locked into the outcome of our work - writer's circle approval, grades, competitions, publishing - and forget that once upon a time all we were trying to do was get something that was haunting us out of our heads and down on paper. Letting go of the outcome of the work - which is what you're doing, Dee - ought to be as fruitful as letting go of the outcome of doing anything is. I hope you keep us posted!

Emma

I was initially tempted to sneer 'is there another way of writing', but then I remembered why I left here in the first place.

Writing for your own enjoyment, rather than for the enjoyment of people you don't know, to me, is therapeutic. If I ever decided to get published, I ensure that I got there writing what the way I liked to. If it's good enough for me (and it usually isn't, to be fair), then it should be good for a fair few others who don't set any standards of what they read.

Should mean a few million Daily Mail and The Sun readers should lap up anything I write that might make it to print... I may have to think more on this...

But yeah. Just write it. Don't edit, don't trim, don't compromise. Just create. It won't win you any prizes, but it'll make you feel good. Works for me.

I didn’t know I was doing it until I parted company with my agent. While I was, obviously, angry and upset by the circumstances that caused the split, I was also surprised to feel a sense of release. I realised that I'd had a constant internal voice harping on at me, almost dictating what he would or would not accept.

To give some backstory, he signed me up after he’d advised me to remove a murder from my novel (not TWH), resulting in a pretty lengthy rewrite. With hindsight, I think it took a good edge off the story and could well be the reason he failed to sell it. I’ll never know. He later asked me to cut a rape scene from TWH (there’s a pattern emerging here, isn’t there?)

I think all of us who want to be published write for our target audience and quite rightly care what they think of our work. But to get it to them we have to hurdle the personal opinions of an agent and/or all the stages known as ‘a publisher’. And that’s fine in a way. It keeps us working, honing, practising our skills.

But, as Emma points out, letting non-writers see your work before you have confidence in it yourself can be very damaging. I once let another unpublished writer see some of mine (PFTG if you remember it) and he, unknown to me, let his 85-year-old mother-in-law read it. She said she didn’t like it because I used the word ‘fuck’ and 85-year-old women don’t like That Kind Of Language. Clearly she is not the moral voice of any age or gender group, so I ignored her, but that was the last time I let a non-writing reader see my work before I was happy with it myself.

I'm straying off the point here… more later, hopefully.

Dee

Wow, Dee, that must have been tough at the time. The difficulty is that agents aren't writers; their job is to act as a representative reader, but it's hard for us to remember that they still have the limitation that any reader has: they can't always separate their personal reactions from their judgement of the work. (The only reader I'd exclude from this is a CW teacher, who most of the time can see when something works, even if they don't like it).

My agent asked me to change a fairly important piece of plot in The M of L. She said that she mistrusted half her reason because it was commercial - that it was one of the few subjects that readers just hate - which was when I realised she was the right agent for me. The other half was because she didn't think it worked.

Actually, she was right, and so were all the other people who hadn't been keen on it right from the beginning. But it fitted with an important theme, so I'd ignored all those voices and left it in. But it didn't sit right with the feel and tone of the rest of the novel, and now that I've un-dug my toes from where I was furiously digging them in at the suggestion, I have to admit she was right (and so was everybody else) in terms of story-telling, and that the theme-link had to be sacrificed in that cause. Interestingly, the copy-editor asked, in passing, whether a deliberately un-explained event had been caused by piece of plot that I'd cut. That pleased me rather!

I think one of the places where it can get difficult with agents is that they're the only voice you're hearing, and you're so dependent on that personal view, however experienced it is. Maybe there's safety in the numbers of a workshop or writers' circle. With any luck there's at least one voice piping up against the chorus and saying 'well I rather like it...'


Emma

It was tough, Emma, but I have a rubber bum. One of the things I've learned in the past few years is how to bounce back.

I rewrote the rape scene in TWH three times before I accepted that he wouldn’t take it in any form. I then came up with a completely different scene which he loved and which, I have to say, I think is better than the original so it has stayed.

There was an interesting piece on Radio Fivelive the other day about independent bookshops v Amazon and the bookstore chains. The discussion was mostly about the price of books but the Amazon representative argued the case that they are an avenue for low demand and quirky (his word) books that shops don’t have the space or the turnover to stock. It set me off thinking again about the enormous gulf between supplier and consumer that is the publishing industry. Most writers believe they are writing what people want to read. Publishers say they are responding to public demand… where does this ideal arrangement break down? Why do I feel I'm on the wrong side of a sheet of bullet-proof glass?

I'm wandering again… think I’ll go write something.

Dee

Dee, yes, you need to be resilient. I'm not sure how you learn to be it though. Though being around other people who understand can help you gather yourself again for another try, and knowing you're making yourself get better as a writer can make you have more faith that you'll get there one day. And there's safety in numbers. It sounds paradoxical, but if I send out ten submissions at once, when they start plopping back through the letter box, I just think, 'bother, that one didn't work'. If I send out one, I wait breathlessly for weeks, dreaming of what might be happening, and am pretty shattered when it does come back. I haven't entered enough competitions to know if it's true then, but I suspect it is.

I'm interested that you did feel that taking out the rape scene in the end was right. I've often found that if something doesn't work however I do it - and it's often someone else who's pointed that out - it's probably because it shouldn't be there, and finally take a knife to the throat of that particular darling. Do you still regret taking out the murder?

Re Amazon, it was noticeable that when the Soc of Authors were explaining just why their Search-inside-the-Book is such a very bad idea, they were also very clearly saying that the way Amazon keeps big-publisher backlist and the small presses available is valuable-and-important-and-we-would-never-deny-that.

I know what you mean about the mis-fit between us writers and the readers that we need the publishing industry to get our work to. But I do think writers sometimes should take some of the blame for refusing to understand how the economics of publishing work. And also realise that they're as partially-sighted as anyone else when it comes to how other people are. Why should I expect the rest of the world to be interested in what I'm interested in, or have my references and my concerns, or understand my ground-breaking style, just because my nearest and dearest and writing circle all do?

Experimental work that moves beyond enough literary (or any other) boundary that it becomes difficult for most readers to make sense of or enjoy is never going to sell a lot of copies. In my grumpier moments I get bored with writers who think that's everybody's fault but theirs. Doesn't mean I don't think they should write like that, just that they shouldn't be surprised when it's not on the shelves of Tesco. Maybe we should get real, just shut up and be grateful that we no longer have literary censorship. (I'm still cherishing the woman Susan Hill says entered her novel-competion saying 'of course, I wouldn't want to be in any way commercial'. Commercial, after all, only means saleable, says SH, and I wish it wasn't used as an intellectual snob's dirty word.)

I also get bored (I am grumpy this morning!) with people going on and on about how unadventurous the Booker/Orange etc. are, when there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who've read really exciting books like Life of Pi, or the Poisonwood Bible, purely because they won.

At the moment, I'm struggling with how to convey some staggeringly complicated 15th politics without which my story will make no sense, without making my novel seem like a text-book, like a biography-with-conversations, or like an incomprehensible muddle. That's a technical and literary challenge I relish. Maybe, instead of trying to get books published through an industry that thinks (maybe rightly) that readers don't want them, we should start from what readers do want - terrific stories, well told - and work what we want to say into them.

I said to my editor that this is what I'm always trying to do - write something as unputdownable as I can manage, that also has in it ideas and facts and patterns and themes about things I want to talk about. She said, 'I can't tell you how rare that is. I can't tell you!'

Emma

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Goodness, that came out long. I'm obviously not relishing the challenge of this morning's work all that much!

Hi Dee,

A very interesting discussion. Your last two statements 'Most writers believe they are writing what people want to read. Publishers say they are responding to public demand.'

Both these points are largely true, certainly publishers must always look at the commercial promise in any work they handle... it's money, business, full stop!

While I feel that the publishing cake is 'limited' the army of writers continues to grow and cry out for their slice of the cake. One of the problems is that so many of these writers are - and will remain - writers, their chances of becoming authors are extremely slim and, in so many cases, non-existent.

This has fuelled internet publishing with the rise of many magazines. In many cases the standards of the writing published in this way is not generally very good; the main reasons for this are 1. The Editors of these Internet publications do not have to take into account the 'commercial' potential of the writings and 2. The selection of works is made by someone whose main judgement aspect is 'I like it' and in some cases one might question the abilities of that 'editor' in the assessment of any writing.

With very few exceptions (children's segment audiences, academic work etc) I believe a writer should write for him or herself but I am also convinced that this is an impossible state to achieve if one has any understanding of the wider world of writing, or if one has any true ambitions or desires to be published or even just to improve one's writing.

There is nothing wrong with writing solely, completely and utterly for oneself, but don't call it 'writing'... writing is a form of communication and that word presupposes the existence of a sender and receiver. If one wants to deny the subconscious realisation that it is the reaction of others to one's words that really matter, then one can resort to finger painting in the sand or the making of notes in hieroglyphic form, comprehensible only to the so called 'writer'.

Len

Len, I agree with you about the proliferation and the standard of on-line publishing choices. Have to disagree about your definition of ‘writing’ though. I see writing as a creative process, regardless of its intended destination. Keeping a diary is writing, even though most will never be seen by anyone other than the writer.

As for writing what I like best, with a view to publication, I've tried that. I spent eighteen months writing a supernatural story and now I've been told by several people in mainstream publishing that, while it is well-written, supernatural does not sell in large enough quantities to make it a commercial success. So I'm faced with two options: bin it and try something else which I'm not so enthusiastic about but which may be more commercial, or looking to the smaller, specialist publishers who may be more willing to see its potential. I've heard it said that a good writer is a good writer, whatever they’re doing. That may be so, and I'm not suggesting it applies to me, but I don’t want to spend another year or two churning out something I'm not 100% enthusiastic about. So, in an act of faith – or folly – I'm trying the second option and, at the same time, working on another supernatural novel.

Dee

Hi Dee,

This is a very interesting idea, and I agree with the spirit in which you are undertaking it.

It is good to just to sit down and write, free from external pressures or expectations. I think it helps you to understand what it is want to say, and, maybe, help to answer the question 'why do I write?'

I do think Len has some very valid points though. I am very new to novel writing (nearing completion of the first draft of my first),but I've spent some time in the theatre. The rule there, as I see it, and to paraphrase Peter Brook, is that in order for a piece of theatre to take place it most have at least one performer and one spectator. The theatre exists in the connection between the two.

I may be stretching it here, but the communication between the author and their reader through the words of the novel act in a very similar way. It is this communion, and through it the testing of the work in question, that separates writers from Authors. Published or otherwise.

Best of luck with it, and do let us know how it goes.

All the best

Harry

The rule there, as I see it, and to paraphrase Peter Brook, is that in order for a piece of theatre to take place it most have at least one performer and one spectator. The theatre exists in the connection between the two. I may be stretching it here, but the communication between the author and their reader through the words of the novel act in a very similar way.

Yes, and no. The difference is that a piece of theatre will change with each performance, depending on what happens in that connection between the two. With writing, different readers will make different things of it, but the writing is always the same - you and I read the same Bleak House, but we don't see the same Henry V unless we go to the same production on the same night.

I quite take your point, Len, about the wildly varying standard of the writing on the net, but I think it does an enormously valuable service as an outlet for human creativity. Creativity is a good thing, and it deserves and needs outlets that don't depend on commercial decisions. At the risk of sounding like whichever nasty Tory minister it was, maybe the legions of good, aspiring, unpublished writers is the price we pay - the price worth paying? - for the staggeringly high standard of what does get published. I'm remembering Ion Trewin (Orion), saying that once upon a time a promising author's not-very-good first couple of novels would be published while the industry would wait for his very good third to come along, and now they would wait till it did before publishing that author. He thought (and I think I agree with him) that on the whole that was a good thing.

Dee, I think your strategy is a good one, and I admire you for tackling two projects at once. I think it's particularly tough when the industry turns work down on grounds that you can't do anything about. I was turned down by an agent because she said that personally, she didn't like parallel narratives, although she could see the quality of the work. On one hand, the parallel narrative was non-negotiable, about that novel at least. On the other hand, it was one of those truly awful moments when you think 'but this is what I do. Is the world never going to want it?' In the end I nibbled away at the problem from both ends - had help to make it a much better book, and tried more agents.

You never know, though. If you do something else - lots else - and then come back to TWH (I loved the bit I read, I remember), you might be able to transform it - or even just use that material without going back to it - and make something so irresistible that you get reactions like 'I don't usually go for supernatural, but this is so amazing that...' But maybe that's just my way - I'm a compulsive re-cycler of material, rather than a compulsive re-reviser, and that doesn't suit everyone.

Emma

Hi Dee,

I don't think I attempted to define what 'writing' is. My point was that if one regards oneself as a 'writer', there will exist a subconscious realisation that this is 'communication' and it was that word I attempted to slightly define.

The writing of a Diary can be on so many levels from a series of shorthand phrases or 'marks', understandable only to the diarist, to the colourful and creative language that was common quite a few decades ago. It is the introduction of this 'creativity', this spark of 'looking at things anew', this love of expressing emotions in a new form, that will automatically give rise to the subconscious aspect I referred to. Once that subconscious state clicks in, the 'effect' of one's writing becomes a purpose within that writing... and the 'effect' means the reaction of others reading your work.

Len



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Emma,

Do you truly think that the vast majority of published works reach 'a staggeringly high standard'? I don't.

I do agree that the existence of publishing on the net is a good thing for it does permit an outflowing of truly creative writing anong the crap and tripe that we see. I just wonder why this does not find itself flowing into the mainstream of publishing.

Len

Len, no I don't think the vast majority of works reach that standard. The vast majority of published works aren't even fiction, let alone good fiction. I think there's a small amount of great art out there, quite a bit of good stuff that doesn't quite make it in some way but is still well worth writing and reading and publishing, and plenty of rubbish, some of which is good-of-its-kind, though I wouldn't read it myself. Time will sift out which is which. Since we won't ever agree which is which, I for one am not prepared to say that any of it shouldn't exist.

I think what I meant is that there is some amazingly good work out there, and we should count ourselves lucky. Maybe the best analogy is with actors. There's an argument that if it takes 100,000 people to train as actors to have 5,000 excellent ones available for us to watch, 95,000 actors are going to have to resign themselves to being unemployed for much of the time. Maybe all those unpublished writers are basically unemployed actors.

And my point about the internet was not that it contains a few good bits among what we would judge to be literary rubbish (though it does). I think what I meant was that it's valuable to have a place where 'good' isn't necessarily the point, any more than it is with my daughter's stumbling and out-of-tune but enthusiastic violin playing. The point is that doing these things is a valuable human activity. Creating something and wanting people to read it is valuable, just as going to some trouble to cook and eat a meal with my family is a good and important thing to do, and the fact that the cooking might not be the greatest ever doesn't change that.

Emma

Emma,

You pinpoint the fact that we each have our own definitions of what is 'good' and so on. I do recall a situation where the only explanation why I disagreed with a fellow staff member about the use of a piece of writing was 'We shall use that! I have more pips on my shoulder!' Just illustrates how insipid one can get when assessing written work!

Len