Things I hate
In no particular order:
Publications that use their email submission process to send you a rejection on a Sunday - it used to be that one day a week you were safe from those evil 'not for us' messages that arrived by post, but now you can receive evidence of your literary inadequacy all the week through!
Places that send you back the first page of your story with no comment, not even a 'not for us' slip. Why be so rude? How long would it take to add a standard compliments slip with a short message to the envelope?
Writers who reply to thoughtful emails detailing why I'm not accepting their work, by sending me personal insults. To my great delight, I have one writer who has submitted work, then sent me insults when it's not accepted, via three different publications in the past two years. He is, not to be delicate, an arsehole! He can't imagine that I'm blind, deaf and invulnerable because if he did, it wouldn't be worth sending rude messages to me. He might imagine that I'm far too elevated to be affected by his nastiness, in which case he ought to be taking my comments on his work a little more seriously, as they obviously come from somebody with inhuman self control and generosity of spirit. But actually I think he just hasn't realised that I am one person, who has read for several sites and journals, because he's never bothered to look at the mastheads of the places he submits to.
Rain.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Friday, October 20, 2006
The inadvertent joys of editing
When we write in the first glorious heat of creativity, we don't (or shouldn't) stop to measure our words.
Later we return to our work (if we're wise) with the cold viewpoint of a bored and jaded reader, and re-evaluate all that hot and sometimes purple prose. But sometimes we miss things. Today's gem from my editing pile is 'he ran through the door and down the corridor, then remembered himself and returned to lock it.'
I wonder why he locked it? Anybody could get into the room through the hole he'd made in the door ...
When we write in the first glorious heat of creativity, we don't (or shouldn't) stop to measure our words.
Later we return to our work (if we're wise) with the cold viewpoint of a bored and jaded reader, and re-evaluate all that hot and sometimes purple prose. But sometimes we miss things. Today's gem from my editing pile is 'he ran through the door and down the corridor, then remembered himself and returned to lock it.'
I wonder why he locked it? Anybody could get into the room through the hole he'd made in the door ...
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Would you, could you pay a fee?
My view of contests is cynical. I enter very few, and only those where I have some strong and clear sense that the contest is properly organised, well run, fair and distributive. By which I mean that I expect to see some kind of accounting process that shows how the income from the contest was used. As a slush reader, I don't expect every contest to finance the prizes, the hours of work, the time given by judges etc as a public benefit, but I do expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL chunk of that income emerging as prize money. I would never pay a journal to read my work outside of a contest - they should be paying me, whether in cash (which is great) or copies (which are good) or kudos (which is acceptable) or all three!
How about a pre-ordered copy?
But what do you, dear reader, make of an anthology that solicits short stories and says it isn't charging a reading fee (I should bloody hope not) but that it asks all submitting writers to pre-order a copy of the final anthology? Let's be clear, there isn't even a prize on offer, unless you consider publication to be a lottery for which you must pay.
I would not, could not pay a fee
To me, this is just a fee by another name. Their hook is that you will get a copy of the anthology, but I like to choose my reading matter for myself, thank you! Suppose they never publish it, or suppose it's cheap and shoddy rubbish? Will you feel you've got value for money?
Nor pre-order an advance copy
Here are the questions I ask myself:
1 - will they be influenced by who pre-orders and who doesn't, when selecting stories?
2 - will they even read the stories of writers who don't pre-order?
3 - how sound is their business and distribution base if they have to rely on unpublished writers buying the book?
4 - is there any credibility to an anthology where this kind of practice takes place?
5 - if I ordered ten copies, would they feel able to turn my story down, even if it was crap?
6 - why can't I find this high profile, world-changing original anthology on Amazon?
They know who they are and I know who they are, and if you really want to know who they are, contact me with an email addy and I'll direct you to their website so you can know who they are.
My view of contests is cynical. I enter very few, and only those where I have some strong and clear sense that the contest is properly organised, well run, fair and distributive. By which I mean that I expect to see some kind of accounting process that shows how the income from the contest was used. As a slush reader, I don't expect every contest to finance the prizes, the hours of work, the time given by judges etc as a public benefit, but I do expect to see a SUBSTANTIAL chunk of that income emerging as prize money. I would never pay a journal to read my work outside of a contest - they should be paying me, whether in cash (which is great) or copies (which are good) or kudos (which is acceptable) or all three!
How about a pre-ordered copy?
But what do you, dear reader, make of an anthology that solicits short stories and says it isn't charging a reading fee (I should bloody hope not) but that it asks all submitting writers to pre-order a copy of the final anthology? Let's be clear, there isn't even a prize on offer, unless you consider publication to be a lottery for which you must pay.
I would not, could not pay a fee
To me, this is just a fee by another name. Their hook is that you will get a copy of the anthology, but I like to choose my reading matter for myself, thank you! Suppose they never publish it, or suppose it's cheap and shoddy rubbish? Will you feel you've got value for money?
Nor pre-order an advance copy
Here are the questions I ask myself:
1 - will they be influenced by who pre-orders and who doesn't, when selecting stories?
2 - will they even read the stories of writers who don't pre-order?
3 - how sound is their business and distribution base if they have to rely on unpublished writers buying the book?
4 - is there any credibility to an anthology where this kind of practice takes place?
5 - if I ordered ten copies, would they feel able to turn my story down, even if it was crap?
6 - why can't I find this high profile, world-changing original anthology on Amazon?
They know who they are and I know who they are, and if you really want to know who they are, contact me with an email addy and I'll direct you to their website so you can know who they are.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Thinking about clichés
There are two definitions of a cliché:
1 - a trite or overused phrase
2 - an expression so exact that it moves into common language.
I've been pondering these two in relation to a couple of copyediting jobs I've had recently.
The doornail is an example of the former. Why is a doornail dead, or deader than any other nail? How dead is it? I asked my client these questions and he replaced the phrase with 'deader than last week's Radio Times', an expression that is fresher and - for a British audience at least, conveys the absolute lack of life in the corpse in question.
An example of the latter is 'raining buckets'. It is a cliché, no doubt about that, but whenever we tried to come up with an alternative, it looked as if we were straining for an effect and all that we could see, when we looked at the text, was the attempt to get around the three or four phrases that everybody would have expected to see there; raining buckets, raining stair rods, raining cats and dogs etc.
Of course clichés have value, they wouldn't make it into public awareness if they didn't, and that value often depends on what you're writing. In my first client's thriller, quite a few clichés were allowed to remain because they moved the action on and the last thing you want, when you've written a break-neck car chase (see that one?) is the reader stopping to ponder what you mean by some unusual phrase.
For my other client, who is writing an M.A. narrative of 20,000 words, my job is to pounce on (and that one?) every cliché with glee (that one too?) and help her find either a new way of saying what she means, or a simpler and less obtrusive one, so that if the prose isn't sharp and thought-provoking it's at least as clear and distortion-free as George Orwell's famous window pane.
Knowing your purpose helps you understand how to use language. Clichés aren't always bad, but we need think as carfully about how we use them as we do with our more original phrases.
There are two definitions of a cliché:
1 - a trite or overused phrase
2 - an expression so exact that it moves into common language.
I've been pondering these two in relation to a couple of copyediting jobs I've had recently.
The doornail is an example of the former. Why is a doornail dead, or deader than any other nail? How dead is it? I asked my client these questions and he replaced the phrase with 'deader than last week's Radio Times', an expression that is fresher and - for a British audience at least, conveys the absolute lack of life in the corpse in question.
An example of the latter is 'raining buckets'. It is a cliché, no doubt about that, but whenever we tried to come up with an alternative, it looked as if we were straining for an effect and all that we could see, when we looked at the text, was the attempt to get around the three or four phrases that everybody would have expected to see there; raining buckets, raining stair rods, raining cats and dogs etc.
Of course clichés have value, they wouldn't make it into public awareness if they didn't, and that value often depends on what you're writing. In my first client's thriller, quite a few clichés were allowed to remain because they moved the action on and the last thing you want, when you've written a break-neck car chase (see that one?) is the reader stopping to ponder what you mean by some unusual phrase.
For my other client, who is writing an M.A. narrative of 20,000 words, my job is to pounce on (and that one?) every cliché with glee (that one too?) and help her find either a new way of saying what she means, or a simpler and less obtrusive one, so that if the prose isn't sharp and thought-provoking it's at least as clear and distortion-free as George Orwell's famous window pane.
Knowing your purpose helps you understand how to use language. Clichés aren't always bad, but we need think as carfully about how we use them as we do with our more original phrases.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Make history!
Today is One Day in History day. It's your chance to become part of the fabric of social history, forever. What writer doesn't want that?
All you have to do is visit History Matters and make like Samuel Pepys.
Today is One Day in History day. It's your chance to become part of the fabric of social history, forever. What writer doesn't want that?
All you have to do is visit History Matters and make like Samuel Pepys.
Monday, October 16, 2006
How much do you want to know ...?
Today I had cake and conversation with a dear friend who has been the sparking point of many ideas (and arguments) over the years. We disagree on many things, which is one reason our relationship is so rich, and one of the major things on which we disagree emerged again today.
I hate the style of literary reading that begins with the biography of the writer. I do not need to know the horrible details of Virginia Woolf's death to appreciate her writing. Disclosures about George Orwell's covert political activities in no way influence my response to his writing. I do not care whether J K Rowling or J R R Tolkein were married or not.
He does.
My view is that the writing stands alone. His view is that all the writing comes from inside the writer and so what we know of them helps us understand/appreciate what they say.
My view, increasingly, is that the writing DOESN'T come from inside the writer. The idea might, the craft assuredly does, and the bloody-minded willingness to keep going in the face of obstacles certainly does (yes, you can tell from this bitter aside that agents still don't want to read my novel) but the writing, the wider something that informs good literature, is more of a light for which we are but a lens (oh dear, that sounds a bit Mary Baker Eddy, doesn't it?) or alternatively, it's when we set aside what is inside us, and try to write without ego, that we produce something wider, or deeper, than our 'self'. Which is not to say we're not in control of the process. It's a bit more like being a boat on a river with many currents. If we insist on charting our course from a to b regardless of the current, we're leading with our ego. If we let the current help us, we're more part of the process than the whole of the process.
I'm not sure that makes sense, even to writers, and is probably totally obscure to non-writers. I think what I'm saying is that we are touched by much more experience: visual, emotional, intellectual, than we can ever properly internalise and turn into parts of ourselves. Often the things that touch us most are the least explicable to us, and it's when we attempt to illuminate what is puzzling or strange or antithetical to our own personality that we slip out of our own skins and move into the realm of creativity.
Great writers do this more effortlessly than anybody else, and that is why their own history may sometimes be a distortion of their writing - slipping your own skin allows you to write happiness when you are sad, sadism when you are a pacifist, love when you live forever alone. That's what we should look at, not the detail of biography.
Today I had cake and conversation with a dear friend who has been the sparking point of many ideas (and arguments) over the years. We disagree on many things, which is one reason our relationship is so rich, and one of the major things on which we disagree emerged again today.
I hate the style of literary reading that begins with the biography of the writer. I do not need to know the horrible details of Virginia Woolf's death to appreciate her writing. Disclosures about George Orwell's covert political activities in no way influence my response to his writing. I do not care whether J K Rowling or J R R Tolkein were married or not.
He does.
My view is that the writing stands alone. His view is that all the writing comes from inside the writer and so what we know of them helps us understand/appreciate what they say.
My view, increasingly, is that the writing DOESN'T come from inside the writer. The idea might, the craft assuredly does, and the bloody-minded willingness to keep going in the face of obstacles certainly does (yes, you can tell from this bitter aside that agents still don't want to read my novel) but the writing, the wider something that informs good literature, is more of a light for which we are but a lens (oh dear, that sounds a bit Mary Baker Eddy, doesn't it?) or alternatively, it's when we set aside what is inside us, and try to write without ego, that we produce something wider, or deeper, than our 'self'. Which is not to say we're not in control of the process. It's a bit more like being a boat on a river with many currents. If we insist on charting our course from a to b regardless of the current, we're leading with our ego. If we let the current help us, we're more part of the process than the whole of the process.
I'm not sure that makes sense, even to writers, and is probably totally obscure to non-writers. I think what I'm saying is that we are touched by much more experience: visual, emotional, intellectual, than we can ever properly internalise and turn into parts of ourselves. Often the things that touch us most are the least explicable to us, and it's when we attempt to illuminate what is puzzling or strange or antithetical to our own personality that we slip out of our own skins and move into the realm of creativity.
Great writers do this more effortlessly than anybody else, and that is why their own history may sometimes be a distortion of their writing - slipping your own skin allows you to write happiness when you are sad, sadism when you are a pacifist, love when you live forever alone. That's what we should look at, not the detail of biography.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The world is a small place. The publishing world smaller still. SmokeLong Quarterly gave me one of my first publication credits and I’m proud to say something of mine has appeared in their excellent annual every year, although I’ll have to get my finger out for this year, as I haven’t subbed anything yet! Excellence in publishing is rare – in online publishing rarer still, but every time they put up a new issue I find at least one outstanding piece of flash fiction; a story that turns the world inside out in a thousand words. So when I was looking for an online publisher to give me the skinny on how the ‘zine world works, I couldn’t think of anybody better to approach than Dave Clapper. He’s one of those writer/editors who somehow finds time to do both things well, although as he reveals in his interview, it’s not easy, and he has the ability, along with his team, to spot the unique voice of an emerging writer. You can read one of his stories, which is a personal favourite of mine at Unlikely Stories. So I asked Dave the dirty dozen:
How did you get into publishing?
I suspect my story is similar to a lot of publishers of lit mags. As a writer, I was frustrated by the magazines to which I was submitting. Some of the editors were great about responding to submissions, but many weren't. In one case, I only found out that my work had been accepted for publication when the published work turned up in a Google search. There also seemed to be an alarming death rate among the magazines where I appeared. Twice, for example, accepted pieces never appeared because the magazines went defunct before the stories were published. I wanted there to be at least one market that responded to writers quickly and kindly and that wouldn't disappear suddenly. Since starting SmokeLong, of course, I've realized that there are a ton of great editors and publications out there - I just didn't seem to have much luck finding them.
What’s the best thing about being a publisher?
I love presenting outstanding work to a broad audience that may have never heard of any given writer that we're publishing. We're very lucky to register between 150,000 and 200,000 page views per issue, so our writers get read a lot.
And what’s the worst thing?
Having to reject submissions. And unfortunately, we have to do this a lot. We get about 500 submissions per issue and publish only 20, so we have to say "no" much more than I'd like.
What’s the one mistake you made, when starting out, that still haunts you?
I don't think there's any one thing that really haunts me. Every mistake provides some sort of learning experience. Or at least it should. And we had a great staff from the beginning. Lisa McMann co-founded the magazine with me, and we both had so much passion for the project that I think our enthusiasm made it easy to forgive any mistakes we might have made. And since that first issue, we've been really blessed to have incredibly talented and passionate people on staff: Nance Knauer, Thomas White, Amy Sparks, Ellen Meister, Kathy Fish, Marty Ison, Randall Brown, Steven Gullion, Katrina Denza ... and that doesn't even touch on the folks who were with us for one issue as guest editors.
I think it's pretty telling, though, that only a few of those folks are still on staff. It's fairly unusual for a piece not to be read by everyone on staff, and reading about 2,000 pieces a year can become difficult to balance against the rest of our lives. I think almost everyone on staff has seen their own writing production slow down at one point or another. And short of people eventually moving on, I'm not sure that there's any good way to combat that while still giving submitting writers the attention they deserve. Maybe cloning?
Who do you most admire as a writer, and why?
Admire? Man, I admire any writer who gets his or her work out there, whether it gets published or not. It's such an intimate thing to share with people we've never met. That said, if I have to hone it down to one writer, I have to recognize Ellen Parker, first because her writing is among my favorite stuff to read, but second (and maybe it should be first) because I know her and can see how much of her self is in every word she writes. There are probably other writers who peel their words right from their inner organs, but I don't know them well enough to observe it.
What advice would you give somebody who is thinking of entering the world of publishing?
Research. It's an incredibly costly venture. I don't mean that so much in a monetary sense as I do in a time sense. Think seriously about how much time you have and how publishing is going to affect your other passions. In the year before I started SLQ, I think I had something like 30 pieces published. In the three years since, I've had maybe 10. It may not be writing that has its time cut back for every publisher, but be aware that something is going to take a time hit.
And what advice would you give writers hoping to be published?
Read. In particular, read stories in any magazine to which you're going to submit. If you don't like what you're reading, move on, because the odds that the editors of that magazine will like what you're writing are slim. That's not to say that your writing is bad - rather, there's a better match for your writing out there somewhere. Keep looking until you find it.
Write. Write a lot. Give yourself permission to suck eggs, because a lot of your writing is going to suck. Sorry. It will. But you have to write the garbage to get to the good stuff. And the more you write, the less garbage there'll be.
Edit. First drafts aren't perfect. Have patience, though. Learn to put your stuff away for a little while after you write it. Come back to it later fresh. You might be surprised. Some of the stuff you thought was brilliant will be in the garbage, and some of the stuff you thought was garbage will be brilliant. You'll also find mistakes that you won't find upon first read. Fix 'em.
Submit. Get rejected and submit again. Learn not to take rejections personally. You know the writer you most idolize? Rejected more than you can imagine, I'll guarantee it. Maybe not so much once they're "names," but they've been rejected.
Is there something else you can see yourself doing if you weren’t a publisher?
My paying gigs are split pretty evenly between editing and web development, so I guess web development would have to be at the top of that list. And my degree is in theater, which I often miss, so I could see getting back on stage.
If you were abandoned on a desert island, with just one book for company, what would it be?
Oh, hell. The Bible, I guess. Lots of stories in there, many of which I don't understand as well as I'd like to. And if I had all that time to read it, by the time I was rescued, I could probably do more than a half-assed job of telling the Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons of the world the myriad ways in which they're wrong.
How did you get into publishing?
I suspect my story is similar to a lot of publishers of lit mags. As a writer, I was frustrated by the magazines to which I was submitting. Some of the editors were great about responding to submissions, but many weren't. In one case, I only found out that my work had been accepted for publication when the published work turned up in a Google search. There also seemed to be an alarming death rate among the magazines where I appeared. Twice, for example, accepted pieces never appeared because the magazines went defunct before the stories were published. I wanted there to be at least one market that responded to writers quickly and kindly and that wouldn't disappear suddenly. Since starting SmokeLong, of course, I've realized that there are a ton of great editors and publications out there - I just didn't seem to have much luck finding them.
What’s the best thing about being a publisher?
I love presenting outstanding work to a broad audience that may have never heard of any given writer that we're publishing. We're very lucky to register between 150,000 and 200,000 page views per issue, so our writers get read a lot.
And what’s the worst thing?
Having to reject submissions. And unfortunately, we have to do this a lot. We get about 500 submissions per issue and publish only 20, so we have to say "no" much more than I'd like.
What’s the one mistake you made, when starting out, that still haunts you?
I don't think there's any one thing that really haunts me. Every mistake provides some sort of learning experience. Or at least it should. And we had a great staff from the beginning. Lisa McMann co-founded the magazine with me, and we both had so much passion for the project that I think our enthusiasm made it easy to forgive any mistakes we might have made. And since that first issue, we've been really blessed to have incredibly talented and passionate people on staff: Nance Knauer, Thomas White, Amy Sparks, Ellen Meister, Kathy Fish, Marty Ison, Randall Brown, Steven Gullion, Katrina Denza ... and that doesn't even touch on the folks who were with us for one issue as guest editors.
I think it's pretty telling, though, that only a few of those folks are still on staff. It's fairly unusual for a piece not to be read by everyone on staff, and reading about 2,000 pieces a year can become difficult to balance against the rest of our lives. I think almost everyone on staff has seen their own writing production slow down at one point or another. And short of people eventually moving on, I'm not sure that there's any good way to combat that while still giving submitting writers the attention they deserve. Maybe cloning?
Who do you most admire as a writer, and why?
Admire? Man, I admire any writer who gets his or her work out there, whether it gets published or not. It's such an intimate thing to share with people we've never met. That said, if I have to hone it down to one writer, I have to recognize Ellen Parker, first because her writing is among my favorite stuff to read, but second (and maybe it should be first) because I know her and can see how much of her self is in every word she writes. There are probably other writers who peel their words right from their inner organs, but I don't know them well enough to observe it.
What advice would you give somebody who is thinking of entering the world of publishing?
Research. It's an incredibly costly venture. I don't mean that so much in a monetary sense as I do in a time sense. Think seriously about how much time you have and how publishing is going to affect your other passions. In the year before I started SLQ, I think I had something like 30 pieces published. In the three years since, I've had maybe 10. It may not be writing that has its time cut back for every publisher, but be aware that something is going to take a time hit.
And what advice would you give writers hoping to be published?
Read. In particular, read stories in any magazine to which you're going to submit. If you don't like what you're reading, move on, because the odds that the editors of that magazine will like what you're writing are slim. That's not to say that your writing is bad - rather, there's a better match for your writing out there somewhere. Keep looking until you find it.
Write. Write a lot. Give yourself permission to suck eggs, because a lot of your writing is going to suck. Sorry. It will. But you have to write the garbage to get to the good stuff. And the more you write, the less garbage there'll be.
Edit. First drafts aren't perfect. Have patience, though. Learn to put your stuff away for a little while after you write it. Come back to it later fresh. You might be surprised. Some of the stuff you thought was brilliant will be in the garbage, and some of the stuff you thought was garbage will be brilliant. You'll also find mistakes that you won't find upon first read. Fix 'em.
Submit. Get rejected and submit again. Learn not to take rejections personally. You know the writer you most idolize? Rejected more than you can imagine, I'll guarantee it. Maybe not so much once they're "names," but they've been rejected.
Is there something else you can see yourself doing if you weren’t a publisher?
My paying gigs are split pretty evenly between editing and web development, so I guess web development would have to be at the top of that list. And my degree is in theater, which I often miss, so I could see getting back on stage.
If you were abandoned on a desert island, with just one book for company, what would it be?
Oh, hell. The Bible, I guess. Lots of stories in there, many of which I don't understand as well as I'd like to. And if I had all that time to read it, by the time I was rescued, I could probably do more than a half-assed job of telling the Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons of the world the myriad ways in which they're wrong.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Tiny rays of light
This morning an advance copy of Sex and Shopping arrived in the post. It has quite the most provocative cover I've seen this year and my story (or rather, Carmel's story) was a lot of fun to read back through. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed that literary excursion into the world of the shopaholic ...
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
We need to talk about the bad times ... (to steal a line from Lionel Shriver)
Because we all get them. Mine started just after I came back from Kendal, when I succumbed to a really nasty cold (which still hasn't gone, entirely) and arrived home to find a rejection letter from an agent whom I'd been hopeful was seriously considering my latest novel.
Since then, nothing seems to have gone right. Lovely people who are friends and colleagues have got agents, book deals and even film options. I've got rejections. Emerging writers whose work I've enjoyed and tried to support have gained grants and residencies where I've been turned down. Stories I'd thought perfect for certain venues have been rejected. Contests I'd thought I stood a chance of winning haven't even shortlisted my work.
It feels, to be honest, like one of those dreams where you're naked and everybody else is dressed and they are laughing at you but you can't escape.
Such times are horrendous. The experience of being a multiple, multiple failure is vile. What makes is worse is having to be pleased for your friends and associates when all you want to do is howl the unfairness of it to the moon. You do feel happy for them, but you feel utterly miserable for yourself and nobody seems to notice how awful things are for you.
I said it happens to all of us, but that's not true. Some people imagine what a time like this would be like, and it stops them entering the world of literature at all. Right now, I fully understand their feelings.
But I've been here before. This too will pass. It's a cycle, and soon, when it's my turn again to be getting the things I'm striving for, I hope that when other writers congratulate me I'll remember to ask 'How are things with you? No, really, I want to hear,' and if they're in the bad time, to tell them what I know. Which is, it's better to be at the bottom of the heap with everybody else's bootmarks on your body as they climb above you, than to be looking at the heap and knowing you'll never be part of it at all.
However - should you ask me in the next couple of weeks how things are going - I might just tell you! Be prepared to listen to one miserable writer sharing just how nasty it can be to live the writing life, and ignore 90% of what I say. Because if you asked me again a few months from now, I'd tell you the truth - I'm the luckiest woman in the world to be doing what I do for a living. It's simply that, right now, my luck is being overshadowed by the luck of others and I've got to try and enjoy their reflected glory without dwelling on the darkness of my own lack of success.
Because we all get them. Mine started just after I came back from Kendal, when I succumbed to a really nasty cold (which still hasn't gone, entirely) and arrived home to find a rejection letter from an agent whom I'd been hopeful was seriously considering my latest novel.
Since then, nothing seems to have gone right. Lovely people who are friends and colleagues have got agents, book deals and even film options. I've got rejections. Emerging writers whose work I've enjoyed and tried to support have gained grants and residencies where I've been turned down. Stories I'd thought perfect for certain venues have been rejected. Contests I'd thought I stood a chance of winning haven't even shortlisted my work.
It feels, to be honest, like one of those dreams where you're naked and everybody else is dressed and they are laughing at you but you can't escape.
Such times are horrendous. The experience of being a multiple, multiple failure is vile. What makes is worse is having to be pleased for your friends and associates when all you want to do is howl the unfairness of it to the moon. You do feel happy for them, but you feel utterly miserable for yourself and nobody seems to notice how awful things are for you.
I said it happens to all of us, but that's not true. Some people imagine what a time like this would be like, and it stops them entering the world of literature at all. Right now, I fully understand their feelings.
But I've been here before. This too will pass. It's a cycle, and soon, when it's my turn again to be getting the things I'm striving for, I hope that when other writers congratulate me I'll remember to ask 'How are things with you? No, really, I want to hear,' and if they're in the bad time, to tell them what I know. Which is, it's better to be at the bottom of the heap with everybody else's bootmarks on your body as they climb above you, than to be looking at the heap and knowing you'll never be part of it at all.
However - should you ask me in the next couple of weeks how things are going - I might just tell you! Be prepared to listen to one miserable writer sharing just how nasty it can be to live the writing life, and ignore 90% of what I say. Because if you asked me again a few months from now, I'd tell you the truth - I'm the luckiest woman in the world to be doing what I do for a living. It's simply that, right now, my luck is being overshadowed by the luck of others and I've got to try and enjoy their reflected glory without dwelling on the darkness of my own lack of success.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Titles (again)
I had an illuminating conversation with a teacher of Creative Writing this weekend.
He thinks that the model most writers use when choosing a short story title is that of the popular song. And I think he's onto something. Looking back over the stories I've been reading for various places in the past few months, I suspect that there is a tendency to follow that route, which would explain the preponderance of stories that have a woman's name as their title.
The problems with this approach are (a) if we can't remember a song title we tend to run through the lyrics in our head until we reach the relevant ones - which doesn't work for a short story and (b) with a few notable exceptions, the material contained in a song doesn't have the complexity or subtlety of even the shortest short story, so where the reader looks to the author for a key, or maybe just a clue, to the story's meaning, using a given name doesn't suffice.
Compare 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' with 'Christopher John Francis Boone'. The former conveys the sense that this will be a mystery story, contains an allusion to Sherlock Holmes and generally sets us up for what will follow. The latter, being the name of the protagonist, does nothing. When it comes to novels, titles get much debate between authors, agents, publishing houses etc, but for short stories we tend to be on our own.
A good exercise is to come up with eight or twelve potential titles - often just the process of making yourself think about it is enough to produce more evocative or provocative words than grabbing a 'does what it says on the tin' title out of thin air and never reflecting on it again. I set my students an exercise where I give them a one sentence precis of a short story and invite them to come up with titles - hearing other people's ideas kick-starts their own creativity and titling a story that they haven't written themselves frees them up to be imaginative rather than descriptive.
I had an illuminating conversation with a teacher of Creative Writing this weekend.
He thinks that the model most writers use when choosing a short story title is that of the popular song. And I think he's onto something. Looking back over the stories I've been reading for various places in the past few months, I suspect that there is a tendency to follow that route, which would explain the preponderance of stories that have a woman's name as their title.
The problems with this approach are (a) if we can't remember a song title we tend to run through the lyrics in our head until we reach the relevant ones - which doesn't work for a short story and (b) with a few notable exceptions, the material contained in a song doesn't have the complexity or subtlety of even the shortest short story, so where the reader looks to the author for a key, or maybe just a clue, to the story's meaning, using a given name doesn't suffice.
Compare 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' with 'Christopher John Francis Boone'. The former conveys the sense that this will be a mystery story, contains an allusion to Sherlock Holmes and generally sets us up for what will follow. The latter, being the name of the protagonist, does nothing. When it comes to novels, titles get much debate between authors, agents, publishing houses etc, but for short stories we tend to be on our own.
A good exercise is to come up with eight or twelve potential titles - often just the process of making yourself think about it is enough to produce more evocative or provocative words than grabbing a 'does what it says on the tin' title out of thin air and never reflecting on it again. I set my students an exercise where I give them a one sentence precis of a short story and invite them to come up with titles - hearing other people's ideas kick-starts their own creativity and titling a story that they haven't written themselves frees them up to be imaginative rather than descriptive.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Isolation and the Writer
Is it necessary? Is it pernicious?
There's a mythology about the writer who lurks in a garret, producing work of coruscating brilliance. Most of us don't have so much luck! We have to write surrounded by family members, dogs, cats, deadlines, requests to cook, clean, drive people to places, collect dry cleaning, finish this report, come out for a long lunch, leave that until tomorrow, help me do this, look at that lovely sunset, listen to my joke, answer the phone, resolve this dispute, advise on my love life, tell me what you think of this outfit, polish shoes, clean up mess, find my keys ...
Yes, most of us would love a bit of garret isolation.
But too much isolation can be damaging. It leads to sitting at the keyboard feeling depressed and sure that everybody else is succeeding and you are failing. It leads to literary myopia and narrow vision. It can lead to writer's block.
I wish there were some definitive study about where fiction writers write, and why. I know I write better standing up (I have a special stand up desk) and often produce better dialogue if I write on the bus or in a cafe than at home, possibly because I subconsciously pick up the conversations around me and produce more authentic speech patterns as a result. I also know that for scenes of high drama or complex plot twists I need to be left completely alone, with not even the radio or a barking dog to disturb me.
So what works for you?
Is it necessary? Is it pernicious?
There's a mythology about the writer who lurks in a garret, producing work of coruscating brilliance. Most of us don't have so much luck! We have to write surrounded by family members, dogs, cats, deadlines, requests to cook, clean, drive people to places, collect dry cleaning, finish this report, come out for a long lunch, leave that until tomorrow, help me do this, look at that lovely sunset, listen to my joke, answer the phone, resolve this dispute, advise on my love life, tell me what you think of this outfit, polish shoes, clean up mess, find my keys ...
Yes, most of us would love a bit of garret isolation.
But too much isolation can be damaging. It leads to sitting at the keyboard feeling depressed and sure that everybody else is succeeding and you are failing. It leads to literary myopia and narrow vision. It can lead to writer's block.
I wish there were some definitive study about where fiction writers write, and why. I know I write better standing up (I have a special stand up desk) and often produce better dialogue if I write on the bus or in a cafe than at home, possibly because I subconsciously pick up the conversations around me and produce more authentic speech patterns as a result. I also know that for scenes of high drama or complex plot twists I need to be left completely alone, with not even the radio or a barking dog to disturb me.
So what works for you?
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Closer, ever closer ...
Comes the most exciting month of the year. November, when NaNoWriMo takes over my mind, my house and all my waking hours.
Last year Brighton (and Hove actually) had 37 new novelists. More than 37 started, on 1 November, full of confidence. At least two of them, by 27 November, were living on coffee and crying with misery and despair. By 30 November though, those 37 were all wildly celebratory, word-drunk, full of triumph.
NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month. Although it's not a novel necessarily (one has to write 50,000 words in November) and it's not national, as people from all around the world take part. But it is about writing. 1667 words a day, if you work it out that way, for 30 days.
I have the honour (and sometimes horror) of being Brighton (and Hove actually) Municipal Liaison. I try to herd those literary aspirers into coffee shops and bars (okay, they don't take much herding in that respect) and into writing their words ever day (more like herding cats!) and to keep them on track, happy, and productive.
It is the most worthwhile thing I do all year, the most fun, the most demanding and - in the end - the most affirming activity I've ever taken part in. As I say, it's barrelling closer like an out of control truck, and I'm feeling a mixture of panic and delight.
If you've ever wanted to write a novel, perhaps this November you should join us?
Comes the most exciting month of the year. November, when NaNoWriMo takes over my mind, my house and all my waking hours.
Last year Brighton (and Hove actually) had 37 new novelists. More than 37 started, on 1 November, full of confidence. At least two of them, by 27 November, were living on coffee and crying with misery and despair. By 30 November though, those 37 were all wildly celebratory, word-drunk, full of triumph.
NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month. Although it's not a novel necessarily (one has to write 50,000 words in November) and it's not national, as people from all around the world take part. But it is about writing. 1667 words a day, if you work it out that way, for 30 days.
I have the honour (and sometimes horror) of being Brighton (and Hove actually) Municipal Liaison. I try to herd those literary aspirers into coffee shops and bars (okay, they don't take much herding in that respect) and into writing their words ever day (more like herding cats!) and to keep them on track, happy, and productive.
It is the most worthwhile thing I do all year, the most fun, the most demanding and - in the end - the most affirming activity I've ever taken part in. As I say, it's barrelling closer like an out of control truck, and I'm feeling a mixture of panic and delight.
If you've ever wanted to write a novel, perhaps this November you should join us?
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
When you get it right ...
There's a certain feeling that I suspect is only known to writers, and maybe lyricists. It's the sensation you get when somebody contacts you and tells you that something you wrote resonated with their own thoughts or experiences in such a way that you illuminated something for them. Maybe you made a universality out of something they'd thought was only personal to them; maybe you created a literary frame that helped them come to terms with a thought, vision or feeling; maybe you expressed an idea they'd been wrestling with. Whatever you did - you've reached somebody else with your words and made something concrete for them.
María Belen Kundt is an Argentinian who has just set up her own website, in Spanish, to explore the Feminine Principle. She asked if she could translate one of my essays to place on the site and I was delighted to say yes. While my Spanish is so rudimentary that I can barely ask for two coffees and an ashtray, I've been to look at the translation and I'm thrilled to think that people I can't communicate with, are able to read my work thanks to the efforts of such a generous translator. Days like this make me certain that being a writer is the best life possible.
Like Ghengis Khan, only pink - in Spanish
There's a certain feeling that I suspect is only known to writers, and maybe lyricists. It's the sensation you get when somebody contacts you and tells you that something you wrote resonated with their own thoughts or experiences in such a way that you illuminated something for them. Maybe you made a universality out of something they'd thought was only personal to them; maybe you created a literary frame that helped them come to terms with a thought, vision or feeling; maybe you expressed an idea they'd been wrestling with. Whatever you did - you've reached somebody else with your words and made something concrete for them.
María Belen Kundt is an Argentinian who has just set up her own website, in Spanish, to explore the Feminine Principle. She asked if she could translate one of my essays to place on the site and I was delighted to say yes. While my Spanish is so rudimentary that I can barely ask for two coffees and an ashtray, I've been to look at the translation and I'm thrilled to think that people I can't communicate with, are able to read my work thanks to the efforts of such a generous translator. Days like this make me certain that being a writer is the best life possible.
Like Ghengis Khan, only pink - in Spanish
Monday, October 02, 2006
Random thoughts - editors, titles and writers
It always surprises me how little writers know, or bother to find out, about the process of short story publication. When they send their stories out, they seem to lose all interest in what happens. So let me tell you ...
Most editors - say over 80% of editors - are people like me. They don't get paid for the job. Okay, the editors at New Yorker go out for power lunches and wear Prada, but the rest of us sit at computers or tables, in our jeans, giving up our time for free to read your work. At college-based journals, the editor (or intern, as is increasingly the case) who reads your story may be younger than you, with less writing experience and fewer publication credits.
Sometimes, like now, we're reading your work while we have deadlines of our own to meet, lives to lead, bills to pay. Sometimes, like now, we have stinking colds that make us ache in every bone and give us Belisha-red noses and barbed-wire throats. Sometimes, like now, we got a rejection of our own in the post this morning. Even so, we try to put all that aside and give your work the attention we hope to get for our own.
Often, when we pick up a story we sigh. We sigh for different reasons, and these are mine:
1 You don't know the difference between 'I couldn't care less' and 'I could care less'
2 You can't spell accommodation but you've used it several times
3 The story title is a girl's name
4 Your cover letter tells me I'm not capable of understanding your work
5 You list everywhere this story has been rejected from, with commentary on the shortsightedness of the editors who rejected it
6 There's no return address on your letter
7 You've sent science fiction to a magazine that doesn't accept genre writing
8 You didn't include an SASE
9 You sent me this story three months ago and I rejected it then
10 It's another dead dog story.
I read as an editor, and I read slush and contest fiction. I don't get paid for the former but I do for the latter. Sometimes I receive 100 stories to work through in ten days because the person who agreed to read for the contest had cried off (you'd be amazed how often that happens!) and that means reading ten stories a day, with care and attention, and shortlisting maybe sixteen, maybe ten, maybe only four.
It's a big responsibility.
You, dear writer, could help me more than you do.
Please don't call your story 'Laura', 'Sinead' or 'Carla'. It tells me nothing about the story and gives me no hooks to remember your work. Of course if you've written a brilliant love story I'll shortlist it, but I'll probably be talking about it as 'that brilliant love story' because your title won't have stuck with me.
See if the 'The' at the beginning of your title can be removed. 'The Lucky Number Slevin' or 'Lucky Number Slevin' - 'The Death in the Afternoon' or 'Death in the Afternoon'? Makes a small but significant difference in this reader's opinion.
Check your title before you send your story - often you've just bunged something up there because you have to, and yet when we editors TALK about your stories when we're DECIDING whether to accept them or not, it's the TITLE that we use, or forget to use, over and over again. So a weak title may injure your chances of getting a publication slot.
Okay, my cold and I are going to do some slush pile reading now ...
It always surprises me how little writers know, or bother to find out, about the process of short story publication. When they send their stories out, they seem to lose all interest in what happens. So let me tell you ...
Most editors - say over 80% of editors - are people like me. They don't get paid for the job. Okay, the editors at New Yorker go out for power lunches and wear Prada, but the rest of us sit at computers or tables, in our jeans, giving up our time for free to read your work. At college-based journals, the editor (or intern, as is increasingly the case) who reads your story may be younger than you, with less writing experience and fewer publication credits.
Sometimes, like now, we're reading your work while we have deadlines of our own to meet, lives to lead, bills to pay. Sometimes, like now, we have stinking colds that make us ache in every bone and give us Belisha-red noses and barbed-wire throats. Sometimes, like now, we got a rejection of our own in the post this morning. Even so, we try to put all that aside and give your work the attention we hope to get for our own.
Often, when we pick up a story we sigh. We sigh for different reasons, and these are mine:
1 You don't know the difference between 'I couldn't care less' and 'I could care less'
2 You can't spell accommodation but you've used it several times
3 The story title is a girl's name
4 Your cover letter tells me I'm not capable of understanding your work
5 You list everywhere this story has been rejected from, with commentary on the shortsightedness of the editors who rejected it
6 There's no return address on your letter
7 You've sent science fiction to a magazine that doesn't accept genre writing
8 You didn't include an SASE
9 You sent me this story three months ago and I rejected it then
10 It's another dead dog story.
I read as an editor, and I read slush and contest fiction. I don't get paid for the former but I do for the latter. Sometimes I receive 100 stories to work through in ten days because the person who agreed to read for the contest had cried off (you'd be amazed how often that happens!) and that means reading ten stories a day, with care and attention, and shortlisting maybe sixteen, maybe ten, maybe only four.
It's a big responsibility.
You, dear writer, could help me more than you do.
Please don't call your story 'Laura', 'Sinead' or 'Carla'. It tells me nothing about the story and gives me no hooks to remember your work. Of course if you've written a brilliant love story I'll shortlist it, but I'll probably be talking about it as 'that brilliant love story' because your title won't have stuck with me.
See if the 'The' at the beginning of your title can be removed. 'The Lucky Number Slevin' or 'Lucky Number Slevin' - 'The Death in the Afternoon' or 'Death in the Afternoon'? Makes a small but significant difference in this reader's opinion.
Check your title before you send your story - often you've just bunged something up there because you have to, and yet when we editors TALK about your stories when we're DECIDING whether to accept them or not, it's the TITLE that we use, or forget to use, over and over again. So a weak title may injure your chances of getting a publication slot.
Okay, my cold and I are going to do some slush pile reading now ...
Thursday, September 28, 2006
I’ll tell you something surprising.
Three years ago I didn’t know a single novelist – now I reckon I know about thirty. And only a couple of those are people I’ve met at readings and other events, most of them are real-life, down-to-earth, working writers, whom I’ve come into contact with at workshops or through critique groups.
I’ll tell you something else. The greatest thing about rubbing up against (in a metaphorical sense!) writers whose work is nothing like your own, is you learn a huge amount about what makes writing sizzle on the page and what doesn’t. So when I met a sizzler, in Ellen Meister, I know she was going to be a success.
Ellen’s first novel is out, and it’s a hoot; a really zipalong read that balances humour with the kind of experiences that many of us, as mothers and wives, struggle with. I managed to persuade her to take her hand off George Clooney’s thigh (you need to read the book to know what I’m talking about) for long enough to describe the process of writing Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA …
How did you get into fiction writing?
The dream is almost as old as I am. But I carried it with me through college and a career in marketing and copywriting. It wasn't until I was an at-home mother with three children that I finally found the gumption to stop procrastinating and start writing. It was probably my version of a mid-life crisis. I just woke up one morning with my own mortality staring me in the face and thought, when the hell am I going to do this? I could drop dead without ever having pursued this dream. And so I began.
What’s the best thing about being a novelist?
When a stranger writes to tell me I've made them laugh or cry or touched them in some way, it brings me to my knees.
And what’s the worst thing?
The worst thing is obsessing about the sales figures.
What’s the one mistake you made, when starting out, that still haunts you?
I certainly made a lot of mistakes when I started out — and still do. But I'm not sure there's anything in particular that haunts me. I'm not one for regrets, because I think things have a way of working out the way they should, even if it takes a long time to become apparent.
Who do you most admire as a writer, and why?
I admire everyone who sits down in front of a blank screen or a blank page and eventually writes those two words, "The End." Writing a novel takes a special kind of mental and emotional endurance, and I'm hugely impressed with anyone who does it.
What advice would you give somebody who is thinking of trying to get a novel published?
Don’t even think about trying to sell it until you've polished, shined and rewritten it so many times that you know the thing is as perfect as you can get it. Then you have to take off your writer hat, stuff your pride in it, hide it behind your desk and start thinking like a business person. You now have a product and it's your job to sell it.
What part of the publishing process has been most surprising to you as a first time novelist?
Even though I had been told that the writer has a lot of responsibility for selling the book, I still wasn't prepared for how much would fall on my shoulders. Essentially, if you want to be a successful novelist, you have to take an incredibly aggressive approach to marketing and publicity.
On a more personal level, the single most surprising thing that happened in this journey was that Lisa Kudrow, who did the audiobook narration for SECRET CONFESSIONS OF THE APPLEWOOD PTA, plugged the book on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Is there something else you can see yourself doing if you weren’t a writer?
Before my children were born I was a copywriter and eventually ran my own small sales promotion agency. If I wasn't a stay-at-home mom/novelist, I could see going back to that world. I really did enjoy it.
If you were abandoned on a desert island, with just one book for company, what would it be?
Depends. Is George Clooney there to keep me company? Because that's how I've been imagining it …
Seriously, part of me would want to take along one of J.D. Salinger's slim volumes, which I can reread ad nauseam. But if I'm going to be stuck on the island for a long time without (cough cough) company, I'd probably be smarter to take along one of the fat books I enjoy re-reading, like Richard Russo's Empire Falls or John Irving's A Widow for One Year.
Ellen’s book is available through Amazon in the UK or direct from the publisher Click for William Morrow
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Normal service will be resumed when:
I've written the 7,500 words of copy that a very nice client asked for on Monday and wants by Friday!
I've got over an absolutely stinking cold that some kind soul in Kendal must have given to me (and no, I didn't kiss anybody, so I didn't even have fun catching it)
I've been to the dentist ....
Thank the gods that Ellen Meister is going to share all kinds of fascinating information with us tomorrow, because I am really not fit company for you, even via a blog.
I've written the 7,500 words of copy that a very nice client asked for on Monday and wants by Friday!
I've got over an absolutely stinking cold that some kind soul in Kendal must have given to me (and no, I didn't kiss anybody, so I didn't even have fun catching it)
I've been to the dentist ....
Thank the gods that Ellen Meister is going to share all kinds of fascinating information with us tomorrow, because I am really not fit company for you, even via a blog.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Kendal part 2You remember a few days ago I was saying how performance made me so nervous that I would hardly sleep the night before? Well, this is the outcome of that nerve-wracking period. Tell Tales performed on Friday, to an audience of venue promoters, managers and live literature bookers. Quite a tough crowd you might imagine. In fact, on a very hot afternoon when they'd already been exposed to a day and a half of debate, workshop and performance, they were a generous and appreciative group. Tell Tales is an unusual concept in that the stories are chosen to appear in an anthology (mine is in Tell Tales volume 3) but it is also a performance group where writers read their stories to an accompanying soundtrack put together by Zak Akhimien (the Evil Genius) who works with each writer to create a soundscape that matches and enhances the prose.
Hmmm ... so what can I tell you? I'll be smug and give you the review copy, as written after the performance by the poet Tom Chivers, 'Kay Sexton's Allicholy Tale of the Dispunged Dark Lady is a quirky, exceedingly uncomfortable deconstruction of our society's obsession with health and beauty. Sexton has a real knack for capturing authentic colloquial dialogue as well as a flair for performance. In a brilliant twist on the modern passion for exfoliation and moisturising, the narrator - a hairdresser - receives a curse that submits her to dry, scabby skin and dead hair. Gothic stuff, well handled'
My fellow readers, Shamila Chauchan, Kavita Bhanot, Tom Lee and Heather Imani were all fantastic and Zak's music supported each story brilliantly. Our editor, compere and - of course, superb writer in himself - Nii Parkes, kept us, and the audience, at the peak of enjoyment throughout the performance and really made the event come to life. In the photo, from top left you can see Nii and Heather, with Shamila and Zak seated in front. Do they look wonderful? They should. It was one of the most fun events I've ever taken part in.
I'd like to thank the organisers of Live Lit for such a quality event, and especially Linda Graham, Festival Organiser, for her calm competence and welcoming manner. Kate Whiteside, Web Editor of the Westmoreland Gazette, kept me company on my first evening in Kendal and we ate and laughed the whole evening.
And in case you're wondering if I've forgotten about the printed word - not so. Let me tease you with the information that Ellen Meister, new novelist and brilliantly funny writer, is going to be revealing all on Thursday ... watch this space!
Monday, September 25, 2006
Lit Up (part one)This is the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, where I spent Thursday and Friday exploring issues relating to performance poetry, literature and spoken word. This showcase was devoted to promoting live literature to arts professionals and on Thursday evening I was part of a panel that explored what live literature meant to the artists who perform and create it. Shout-outs to John Siddique and Neil Rollinson who were my fellow panelists (and very provocative they were too!) and Malika Booker who chaired.
It was quite frightening to sit in front of an audience that was mainly composed of the people who commission and hire live lit practitioners and debate what we do and why we do it (and how we could do it better) because, necessarily, the debate came down to what didn't work.
So what did we decide didn't work?
Marketing. John and I certainly agreed that our own marketing efforts more often contributed to bums on seats than the marketing of events organisers. We felt that often marketing people didn't know how to talk about live literature and so ... they didn't bother.
And what did?
Everybody, including the audience, seemed to feel that once audiences got to hear live literature, in whatever form, they enjoyed it and wanted more.
Although we debated, often hotly, for an hour, we didn't even begin to scratch the surface of the many issues we could have covered: multiculturalism and live literature; audience age and how it affects audience participation; innovation in literature and whether it helps or harms the printed word; evaluating the effects of live literature on audiences; live lit for schools, hospitals and other centres; improvisation versus rehearsed peformance; competitive live lit (slams etc) versus traditional live lit (poetry readings etc) - I could go on for hours!
It was fun, tiring and thought-provoking and I hope the 'arts professionals' gained a little insight from it. This practitioner certainly learned from the debate.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the actual reading with Tell Tales - the highs, the lows, the sudden panic (oh yes!) and the way we were received and reviewed.
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