Why writers need technology

Here’s the thing – I’ve had a story published! Yippee and all that. Well, more than one story actually. I’m tempted to use the term several in relation to the number, which is something that as a beginning writer I could never have imagined. Who could ever say, airily, ‘Oh, I’ve had several stories published this week’ and how would they ever survive the drubbing that the literary gods would give them for such hubris?

But there you are – several stories have indeed been published. Bizarrely, I am having to beg a virtual stranger to meet me for coffee so that I can verify this truth for myself. Because they have been published by iPhone.

Oh yes. Ether have taken some of what a Guardian reviewer described as the ‘maiden aunts’ of the literary world (not just mine btw, everybody’s short stories are maiden aunts, apparently) and made them sexy. I am keeping company with Hilary Mantel and Paul McCartney, at least in the world of iPhone apps! Makes me want an iPhone just to show off …instead I am meeting a twitter-friend for the first time to see my stories on her phone. And if I hadn’t been twitterate, I wouldn’t have known that she had an iPhone, and that’s why writers need technology and should get on with writing and stop panicking over whether the book is gently decaying into honourable decline. It’s not our business to stress over what form our work appears in, it’s simply up to us to write the best work we can.

And also I met an artist, Jill Tattersall, on Greencycle with whom I struck up such a good conversation that I ended up going round for coffee and to beg some flower seeds from her and now I’m going to attend the preview of her collective’s Open House at The Wolf At The Door (regular readers will know why the title of the show gave me a frisson of magnificent proportions) which is part of the Artists’ Open Houses taking place in Brighton & Hove in May. It looks utterly delicious, right down to the iron wolf in the front garden …

How could any of that have happened to this recluse if technology hadn’t made it possible?

Is the Eyjafjallajokull eruption my fault?

Well, not mine. The fault of the Sunday Times short story competition judges, in fact.

Seriously, a friend of mine, I’ll call her Ursula, because that will make her laugh, thinks it may be true. Ursula is … let’s say she has a different world view to me. Hers includes astrology, homeopathy, astral healing and so on. She’s said I can tell this story as long as I include the statement that in her view I’m amazingly narrow-minded and stultified for somebody who’s supposed to have a good imagination. Consider it recorded.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, Ursula emailed me to ask if I thought the eruption and ash cloud could have been caused by my story (about an Icelandic volcano) not having won the Sunday Times comp. ‘No,’ I replied and forgot about it.

Then this morning she emailed me again, saying that in light of the opprobrium that was being heaped on the actual winner, did I want to reconsider my view?

‘No,’ I replied. Then I had a moment of weakness and rang her to ask how on earth she came to the conclusion that it could.

According to Ursula it’s simple. The Icelandic volcanoes probably don’t get a lot of stories written about them these days, so feel a bit neglected. When ‘their’ story doesn’t win a competition they might have a bit of a rumble in complaint, but when the actual winner is then given a rough time in his own country of origin over the nature of his story, that disgruntlement might spill over into an eruption.

Very simple. Almost logical, if your worldview coincides with Ursula’s.

One problem

The volcano I wrote about is imaginary – there is no volcano upriver from the Gulfoss waterfall, and Eyjafjallajokull isn’t anywhere near the location of my short story.

So you can’t blame me if your flight’s been cancelled, okay?

Judge, so that ye can be judged …

But only in the literary sense.

This week I’m reading the entries for the West Sussex Writers’ Club ‘opening scenes of a romantic novel’ competition. It’s an interesting spread of entries with very different approaches and I’ve chosen to pick out several areas to compare and contrast the works so that I can choose a winner.

The elements I’m focusing on in particular are: the synopsis, which the contestants have to provide along with the first 1500 words of narrative; character development; and dialogue. What I’m not looking at in any great depth is the title or the ‘beauty’ of the words – that complex and impossible-to-describe-but-clear-when-you-see-it element of literaryness on which a lot of contests are judged.

I’m ignoring the title because titles for novels go through so many evolutions and iterations during the process from first draft to publication that they seem, to me, to be outside the parameters of competitive judging. And I’ve chosen to ignore the quality of the words (in terms of beauty that is, not in terms of sense or pace or development of narrative) because I do think that in genre novels it’s a little less important to achieve passages of loveliness and a little more important to create a powerful narrative that keeps the pages turning.

But that’s just me, and another judge might (and next year will) approach the subject in a different way. The point about being a judge, to me, is that it clarifies the process so that I can look at my own work with all the maudlin appreciation removed and the hawk-like discernment enhanced – which means I produce better competition entries myself. Also, it’s great fun!

And that's a sweetshop window in the picture, and you're supposed to envisage me as the kiddy let loose in it ...

This is not a blog post


Because there are some things you cannot do well if you’re tired and writing is one of them, or at least if you’re me, you can’t.

As to why I’m tired, my OH has a recurrence of cluster headaches. If you don’t know the condition I won’t bore you with it, suffice it to say that the sufferer is woken up to half a dozen times a night with intensely painful headaches and the other name for cluster headaches is ‘suicide headaches’ and you’ve got the picture.

So … he does try not to wake me, but I’m a light sleeper at best, so between us we’re getting just about enough sleep for one person – it’s like being a new parent again, but with none of the compensations like having delightful babies to cuddle or people bringing bunches of flowers.

It coshes my ability to write anything decent and although I can read, I wouldn’t describe it as ‘quality’ reading, so I’m not even able to review any books for you.

About all I’m good for is ironing and eating chocolate, so if you have some of each, feel free to drop them off at my house!

(Mind you, even in my current state of exhaustion I can spot a dangling modifier, which is more than the staff of Costa coffee can ...)

Reading and writing

My mate James Burt, recently returned from India, posted a thought-provoking blog here – The Polysyllabic Spree which does raise a lot of questions. What do we want reading to be? That’s reading, the solitary activity, not reading the berkshire town as written by an inveterate texter, by the way.

Well it’s a good question. I’ve always tended to think of reading as an elite activity, possibly because when I was modelling I used to read Tolstoy and the other models used to read knitting patterns (yes, seriously, lots of glamour models could knit for England) which gave me a feeling of superiority related entirely to literature as I knew damn well that was not in any other way superior.
Time rolls on, breasts roll down and become flaps. I become a writer. Now I want reading to be a mass participation activity – the more people read, the more royalties I make and the more likely I am to get my pellucid prose published. Okay, those feelings of superiority appear to have extended to writing as well, somebody slap me!

And then James tells me that Nick Hornby (Nick Hornby?) makes the provocative argument that if the reading age is thirteen, we should accept that point, not get sniffy about ‘good’ literature.

Hmph.

And yet … I am the world’s slowest runner. But I do run. And should I be sniffed at because I run slowly? I think not. I suspect Paul Tergat would guffaw if asked to run at my pace; he probably couldn’t walk that slowly. But does that disenfranchise my claim to be a runner? Again, I think not. The fact that he’s elite and I am sub par doesn’t disallow my claim to be doing what he does (only for shorter distances, and slower, and much less gracefully).

Does this mean that Dan Brown is a writer? Um.

I think I’d better think it out again …

Mini Book Reviews

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon – my book club completely and unreservedly loved this book. Comments ranged from ‘it gave me a real insight into autism’ through to ‘there was a lot of humour in the novel that surprised me’. The only negative point made was that everybody seemed to swear a lot. There was a bit of debate about whether the neighbour should have intervened in the way she did (no spoilers here, folks!) but generally there was a highly positive response to the novel.

Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates – well, I’ve finished. What can I say? I have doubts and dubiety about the process of fictionalising real life (or lives) because I think the grey area of creative non-fiction is close to jeopardising both the richness of fiction and the purity of non-fiction. But this book set aside my doubts and managed to wipe out my dubiety. It is a dense exercise in imagination, breathtakingly powerful, sad and angry and, above all, detailed. The veracity of the account doesn’t matter once you settle into the idea that if Marilyn Monroe were to emerge by Ouija, she would sound like the Oates’ creation. I recommend it. Actually, my literary elitism says that even Tergat style readers might need to pace themselves on this one, but don’t let that put you off if you’re more of a plodder – the journey alone is worth it, and the destination is astonishing. You will never think about Marilyn the same way again.