Ha Jem. Only saying, that's how I see myself.

Roger and Jem.

It seems to me that refusing point blank to write anything which has some kind of commercial parameter is a bit like refusing to go to bed with anyone who isn't your One True Love - and in that definition of Not Your One True Love I'd include a spouse of decades, or someone you really, really like and are attracted to.

Fine, be absolutely ascetic and celibate about it, but you'll miss out on lots of things, including people and places which enrich you, delight you, horrify you, teach you about human beings (never a bad thing for a novelist to learn more of) and so on.

It just isn't as simple as either/or. It's true that maybe one day I'll be seized with a passionate desire to write something completely unsaleable, and then I'll have to decide wether to change it, or write something I can sell. But meanwhile, being paid for what I write - finding a market - means I'm empowered to do more in my writing than if I wasn't being paid.

Emma

I love Geoff Dyer too. His book on DH Lawrence, Out of Sheer Rage, is mainly about Geoff Dyer himself, but it's the best book on Lawrence ever written.

Frances

Oh, he sounds like a pretentious twat. I'm sure he's very nice and clever and all that, but that just makes him sound like a knob.

I chose writing cos I wnated to make a mark on the world, but didn't fancy Big Brother. So surely I'm only half a whore.

I'm afraid I'm still with Phillip Pulman on this one, at least with regards to fiction. Write what you want to write. Don't write with one eye on the market. Write from the heart. It's worked for me.

But when it comes to non-fiction that's of course a whole different matter.....

Write what you want to write. Don't write with one eye on the market. Write from the heart.

I think the thing is, these aren't mutually exclusive. I do write from the heart, what I really want to write, but I'm perfectly willing to be told that the people I want to communicate to - my market, in other words - won't, as it's written at the moment, get what I'm trying to say. Then I set to, and try to find a way to say it which means they will get it.

Emma

I'm afraid I'm still with Phillip Pulman on this one, at least with regards to fiction. Write what you want to write. Don't write with one eye on the market. Write from the heart. It's worked for me.

Oh, that's rich coming from Pullman. I've read his His Dark Materials Trilogy, and in my opinion, based on his use of voice, theme and plot devices, he's one of the biggest whores in the market.


- NaomiM

Alas, I don't have a heart. So I must be a whore.

Roger, do you wear a garter and hang out on street corners of an eve?

I thought you stayed in, busting a gut and turning out excellent novels.

JB

JB, I find the whoring, being mostly night work, gives me lots of time for writing during the day... Only joking - just in case anyone thought I might be being serious.

Another writer once said to me something like: "The moment you start believing you're creating great art is the moment it starts to go wrong." I think this whole divide - a false divide - between 'writing' and 'whoring' is to do with those who believe themselves to be creating art and those who just try to tell stories (as best they can) with a hope that people may want to read them and enjoy them. I shamelessly put myself in the second category and if that makes me a whore, so be it.

And of course I want my books to sell! I'm desperate for people to buy my books, because if they do, I may get the chance to write some more.

I've written enough books that no one has read, apart from my agent and the editors who rejected them, to know what that feels like.

Which is another good point, Roger: if you write exactly what you want regardless of your audience then you may be a very happy and pure little chap but you must not be suprised if you end up with unpublished stuff.
Some people don't mind that but it aint for me.
HB x

I can see the parallels - writer as whore, agent as pimp, readers as customer. But you could apply that negative formula to any industry, couldn't you? I prefer the romantic angle, but maybe that's because if I am a whore, 3 years of hard fucking have only earnt me £50.

Excuse French.

JB

I think there are authors out there who one can comfortably say are not whores; they obviously wrote an offbeat book and had problems getting it published, but persisted because they had faith that, ultimately, their's was a good book.
eg. Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the dog...'
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.
Anything by Will Self (how does that man get published?)

Alas, I don't have a heart. So I must be a whore.

More likely a machine.
I thought the phrase was "tart with a heart"?

Let's face it, nobody with a brain embarks on the gargantuan task of making a long piece of prose readable unless they want somebody to read it. Aiming for saleability is just one of a number of ways to help you achieve quality.