Chance to see Faber archive

I've only just found out about this, and there's only until midnight on Sunday to do it, but I thought I'd draw your attention to this great Museums at Night competition - a draw in which the prize is a night being taken round the amazing archive of publisher Faber. Really, some of my favourite writing has been published by Faber, and I think this would be just a wonderful thing to do. Here are some of the details from the website:

Archivist Robert Brown will take five lucky winners on a journey through 80 years of treasures held in the publishing giant's London office at Bloomsbury House, which is not normally open to the public.

Faber and Faber's unique publishing archive ranges from its famous early twentieth century poetry collection including manuscripts of TS Eliot and WH Auden to books on farming, gardening, art and architecture.

The evening will conclude with an intimate poetry reading by one of Faber's most acclaimed poets, Jo Shapcott [recent winner of the Costa with her collection Of Mutability].

Jo Shapcott 

The event will take place between 6.30pm and 7.30 pm on Friday May 13 at the Faber Archive in London.

To enter, click here.

The competition closes at midnight on Sunday May 8 2011.

 Cross-posted with Elizabeth Baines

Too Much Information?

Daniel Green considers William Gibson's The Neuromancer and science fiction in general.

View From Here article, and thoughts on short stories and CW teaching.

I said in the comments on a post below that I would like to write sometime about the subject of unity and fragmentation in fiction. It's a big subject, and immersion in my wip hasn't yet allowed me to tackle it with the depth it requires, but my monthly deadline on The View From Here has pushed me into putting up some signposts.


In other matters, there's a good post by Daniel Green on The Reading Experience about the vogue for 'quirkiness' in short stories, a quirkiness that he (rightly, I think) says often covers a lack of substance while being lauded as doing quite the opposite. He sees it as stemming from the culture of creative writing teaching programmes, and it does seem to be cw-teaching backlash time: Jessica Crispin gets the boot in on The Smart Set: 'Style is king, and not content', she notes, chiming with Green's perceptions, and accuses cw teachers of, among other things, 'excising all [the students'] adjectives, replacing their libraries of novels with guides'. Interestingly, in an article in the current Mslexia, manuscript editor and former literary agent Rose Gaete picks up on a mantra of cw teaching that can constrain rather than liberate writers:

I often sense that new writers, in an effort to adhere to the maxim 'show, don't tell', can shy away from exploring their characters' motivations. Paradoxically, this can result in less richness and complexity, not more.

Mslexia: Mid-list crisis

Good (and depressing) article by Louise Doughty in the new issue of MsLexia, on the crisis facing mid-list authors. I love the opening paragraph in which she reports what she was told by 'a respected novelist who had had her most recent book turned down by her publisher':

' "They said, the reviews of the last were great, but your sales figures were poor. I replied, they're not my sales figures, they are your sales figures. I did my job. I wrote the book.' "

Word of mouth

Robert McCrum tackles the phenomenon of word of mouth success in today's Observer. I'm a bit amused, though, by John Murray MD Roland Phillips' reported statement - apparently in support of the notion of word of mouth - that 'people don't like to be told what to read'. Maybe he means when you hear publicists talking out of other orifices...

McCrum points out, however, that when a book takes off apparently independently of a publisher's publicity machinery, there's more involved than people simply telling each other about a book: there's the subtler matter of 'the milieu into which the unknown book is released' that creates that kind of grass roots excitement.

The dangers of taffeta

On the matter of gender bias in reviews I was interested to note that, beginning his Observer review of Monica Ali's The Untold Story (her novel that imagines the fate of Princess Diana had she not died), Tibor Fischer says: 'I'm not sure I'm really qualified to review Monica Ali's new novel because I don't know what a French tip manicure is and I'm rather hazy on taffeta.'

I'm kind of charmed by this: Tibor Fischer is a refreshing reviewer whose reviews always shine with this kind of honesty, although since he concludes by pronouncing the book 'classy commercial fiction', I wonder if by saying this he's doing more than simply being honest, but also distancing himself from it.

At any rate, it set me thinking. Would a female reviewer be likely to state so readily that she doesn't feel qualified to review a book due to a haziness about football or motorbike engines? Would she be too afraid of endorsing a general perception that already makes her less likely to be asked to review books by men?

I have to say that I don't know what a French tip manicure is, either, but I must confess that having been brought up by a needleworking mother, and having actually studied textiles at one point, I'm not at all hazy about taffeta, and I say this publicly not without a certain qualm...

Reading group latest

Latest in our reading group discussions: Postcards by E Annie Proulx.

An Apology

This post is an unreserved apology to William Skidelsky, literary editor of the Observer. In an overview post on the reactions to Vida's research on gender bias in reviewing, I attributed to him the view 'that while women read more than men, they mainly read the kinds of books that are not worthy of review'. He has pointed out to me that this is not a comment he made, nor a view he holds, and a look back at the Guardian article on which I was commenting shows that the comment was in fact that of TLS editor Peter Stothard, and related specifically to his own publication, thus: 'And while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS... The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books.' It was a serious error on my part because people picked up on it in the comments section and ran with it.

This is the moment that the lone blogger - unsupported by editors or subeditors - dreads. For the past five years that I have been writing this blog I have lived in horror of making this kind of misrepresentation (and in the process providing fuel for the detractors of blogging), and I can tell you that when I received William Skidelsky's friendly but questioning message I went hot and cold all over. It's why blogging is so particularly time-consuming - the need to check back and double-check, which I signally failed to do on this occasion - and why it is not always compatible with the immersive, distracting and time-consuming project of writing a novel (which is why I think I failed on this occasion).

Once again, my sincere apologies to William Skidelsky, and my thanks to him for pointing out my error and enabling me to put it right.

The vastness of the short story

Good article on the short story by Chris Power. I particularly like this:

...novels that seek to contain multitudes, to embody a particular society at a particular time, seem doomed to fall short. The short story, by contrast, acknowledges the vastness and diversity of life by the very act of focusing on one small moment or aspect of it. The story is small precisely because life is so big.

World Book Night and non-readers.

Interesting comment by Annette Green at The View From Here, on the success or otherwise of World Book Night, quoting some figures. My own comment is more anecdotal. The Oxfam bookshop in our middle-class and pretty literary Didsbury was giving away two of the titles, a thriller (I can't even remember the title: you may know what it was) and Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife. Beforehand I talked about it to Wendy, the manager. Since one of the stated aims had been to get books to people who don't normally read, I asked her if she thought it remotely possible that those sort of people would come and ask for a book (the shop wasn't doing any kind of event, simply advertising in its window that the books would be available for collection). She told me that initially she had thought of giving the books out in the deprived area near where she lives, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought it would be a wasted exercise: so many people there aren't even literate. So she decided to give the books away in the shop instead. She said she would observe carefully those coming for the books and let me know.

Well, I went down to see myself, arriving twenty minutes after the giveaway was due to start. I saw nothing: turned out that beforehand a queue had formed right around the block, but they had cleared out of books within 15 minutes. Everyone had grabbed their book and immediately scarpered! There was just no one around! The staff told me that everyone collecting a book had indeed been your typical book-buying middle-class Didsbury type who'd have been more likely than anyone to buy the books in the first place.

So much for getting the books to those who don't normally read. Although I have to say (as an ex English teacher) that either that was a pious whitewash or those organizing WBN, who really ought to know the harsh facts about the extent of non-reading in our culture and its psychology, had better wise up quick.

Reading group links

Something I started to do was put links on here to the discussions of my reading group, but I'm afraid I have kept forgetting.

Here's the latest, a discussion of Graham Swift's Waterland, and here's a list of all the books we have discussed.

The other World Book Night

If you don't already know about it, do go on over to Nicola Morgan's blog to read about her great idea for contributing to World Book Night. Essentially, having had some doubts about the wisdom of the WBN project to give away 40,000 copies each of 25 books (doubts I share), she has thought up the notion of buying a book between now and Saturday (5th March) and giving it away with an inscription marking WBN and stating where the book was bought. I'm definitely in, for one!

Since the official WBN is concentrating on books already well known, I suggest too buying from a small publisher and a less hyped author - and you couldn't go wrong with my own publisher, Salt!

EDITED IN: I've pulled up a great suggestion from the comments below, made by Nicola Morgan herself:

I'd love if people who did go for my Buy-and-give-a-book idea would add a comment here: http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-did-you-do-for-books-this-week.html to say what they bought and who they gave it too. 

Crossposted with my author blog.

Books on TV

I'm reluctant to be negative about any TV promotion of books, and one's initial response to the recent spate of programmes is pleasure and even gratitude, since, taken together, they would seem to convey the idea of books as a significant aspect of culture. But I think a look at some of the more subtle messages they are sending is in order. I've written disparagingly about the first series of Channel 4's TV Book Club (though I haven't watched the second series and it may have improved) and I read recently on Twitter that Anne Robinson started off her new books programme by saying, rather like some of those early TV Book Club panelists, that she didn't actually read (or even like?) books very much. If the idea here is to woo those viewers who don't much like books either, by making them identify, I'd say that at worst it's something of an exercise in shooting oneself in the foot, and at best it's just too apologetic about books altogether.

While Sebastian Faulks has, on the contrary, conducted his series about fiction with great enthusiasm - and indeed the assumption that it's essential to us - I find the format to have been a denial of the real nature of fiction, and a devaluation. He has presented fiction as merely the sum of its characters - episodes have been on Heroes, Heroines, Snobs and Villains - discussing them to the exclusion of all other aspects of novels, thus giving us a singularly reductive (and realist) view of fiction. This has been compounded by a simplistic assessment of some of those characters themselves (he presents Miss Brodie, for instance, as simply a snob) and a clumsily utilitarian approach: essentially, the characters are there to teach us how to live. We 'love' them or 'love to hate' them, he says (because of what they can teach us about life), a relationship between reader and character which must exclude, for instance, those novels, surreal and/or satirical, in which character is not the main focus. He also goes so far as to say that we can feel we know them better than we know those close to us in life. If we do feel we know characters in books better than real-life associates, I'd say it's because when we read a novel we are gaining privileged access into someone else's mind, that is, the author's, and sharing in a creative construct, one aspect of which will be the characters. However, Faulks' words imply a more immature concept of characters as people in their own right, with 'a life of their own'. While I accept that during the actual reading process we do suspend disbelief and relate to characters as 'real', I'd say that it's a very different thing to transfer this suspension of disbelief into the context of discussion of fiction. The filming of this series seems specifically designed to facilitate that. Many people have commented that every single novel Faulks discussed was illustrated by a TV (BBC?) drama adaptation (dramatisations, for a start, often skew novels by foregrounding character in ways they may not be foregrounded in the original novels) and a striking, and to me, shocking feature was the way that these dramatisations were framed. The producers had gone to a great deal of trouble to find locations for Faulks' commentary that matched the locations of the drama clips shown, and not only that, Faulks was shown in these locations in an attitude of watching, and cuts made which turned him into a voyeur within the drama. Thus we had him looking through the window at Emma talking to Mr Knightley, and more hilariously, spying through another with Notes on a Scandal's Barbara on Bathsheba seducing her schoolboy, and more hilariously still, about to trip over Lady Chatterley and Mellors in the wood. Someone on Twitter objected to me that this is exactly what we do in novels, spy on the characters, but I would disagree: what we are invited to do in novels is to join the author in inhabiting the (constructed) minds of the main characters. It's an act of intellectual and emotional empathy. And while, yes, this is one way that novels can indeed expand our intellectual and emotional horizons ('teach us about life') it's a far more complex and dynamic process than that implied by portraying characters as inhabiting the same plane of reality as commentators and readers. And making this the main point of a series about fiction, is to reduce and patronise fiction in the extreme.

Tweeted to death

Here's a piece which relates to my recent article about Social Networking and the Writer. It includes reference to a recent speech on the subject by Margaret Atwood:

At the recent TOC Margaret Atwood gave a wonderful keynote speech illustrated with hand drawings. “Authors must now Tweet, Blog, and Facebook… if we’re expected to do all this other work, we should the get more of the pie,” she said...  Atwood showed a dead moose drawing: “Never eliminate your primary source,” she said and explained that one dead animal feeds a broad ecosystem. Then, she showed a drawing of a dead author. “Although dead authors can be lucrative,” she said, “No authors, no books.”

(Thanks to Emma Darwin via Twitter for the link.)

Social Networking and the Writer

Today I have a new piece up at The View From Here, Social Networking and the Writer.

Essential difference or different treatment?

Apropos my last post, here's a Guardian article by Gabriel Brownstein which considers the role of marketing in the 'genderization' of fiction.  The article also touches on whether men and women write differently, and there are some interesting comments - one or two of them unwittingly telling in the matter of unconscious bias.

Do the men have it all?

* EDITED IN: This post originally attributed a comment to Observer literary editor William Skidelsky which was in fact made by TLS Peter Stothart (as reported in the linked Guardian article). The post has been altered accordingly, and my sincere apologies to William Skidelsky.

People are much exercised by the shocking statistics in a survey conducted by the American women's literary network Vida, showing male bias in numbers of literary reviewers and of the authors of books reviewed. The Guardian defends itself as being better than most and books editor Claire Armitstead points out that fewer women than men offer themselves as reviewers. Ruth Franklin, books editor of The New Republic confesses to being shocked at her own statistics and sets out to conduct her own survey proving that lit editors are only reflecting the situation created by publishers: publishers publish more books by male authors than by women. Bookslut's Jessica Crispin, who is equally shocked, along with her co-editor Michael Schaub, at their own record, will have no truck with such blame-shifting and the two co-editors are conducting a conversation about the implications for their own biases in choices of books for review and reviewers. Some comments on these posts are enlightening, many pleading that they read more books by men than by women because they simply like them better, discounting the question raised by Ruth Franklin of societally-induced unconscious bias - a concept which it looks as though thinkers of the 80s may as well not have bothered to flog to death. And notwithstanding our healthy and mainly female literary reading-group culture, TLS editor Peter Stothard raises hackles by opining that while women read more than men, they mainly read the kinds of books that are not worthy of review in his publication.

It's how you read it.

An article in today's Guardian Review by Alex Clark sums up recent worries about the role of the editor and ponders the pressures that the books industry is putting on that role, including, interestingly, and I'd say ominously, the possibility of changes in the way we read. In literary criticism, he says:

...there has been a shift away from the painstaking analysis of words and sentences and towards straightforward plot recital and a speedy thumbs up or down

and, with reference to reading generally, concludes:

What we have to be aware of is that the creation of serious literature – whatever the degree of collaboration between author and editor – is the result of enormously concentrated mental and aesthetic effort. If it is reduced to a series of narrative effects slapped on to paper or screen, if it comes to be seen simply as one among many interchangeable ways to ingest a story, it will soon begin to look like a very poor slice of the leisure industry indeed.

Exactly. What's important about a novel is not the 'story' but the way it is told: novels aren't just stories, but constructs of language. 'Story' and mode are never separate entities: it is the mode of telling which creates the meaning and thus the story (which is why I'm not a great fan of drama adaptations of novels). A different word order here, a swapped line there, a cut here, and the whole meaning, and thus the story can change altogether. And this is the essential role of the editor: to help the author achieve the construct through which the intended meaning and story can be realized. (I've written about a significant editing experience of my own in an Author's Note on my current publisher's website here.)

As far as I'm concerned any story can be made interesting (and enlightening, and exciting) with the right way of telling (and of course insight) (and conversely any story, however outlandish and promising, can be made ploddingly dull). But an insistence on story for its own sake is probably, I would say, nurtured by the commercial nature of contemporary publishing: a good 'story' or idea can make a marketing pitch in the way claims about good writing simply can't. The idea becomes the be-and-end-all, and quite frankly I now see far too many ploddingly dull novels praised (on the net, especially) for the quirky 'story' or idea they have in actuality short-changed or even massacred, as if the reviewer were simply blind to the actual language of the novels - indeed, to put it at its most strongly, as if they didn't really, properly read them.

Loathe as I am to knock any return to much-missed coverage of books on TV, I'd say that Sebastian Faulks' BBC2 programme panders to this tendency in spades. In the trailer clip he says that he wants to rectify a recent concentration on the author rather than the book, a laudable enough aim, but his solution is to concentrate on characters, whom he says are 'all that matters', and to talk about them as if they are real rather than merely one element of an author's literary construct (and of course all of his examples are vividly illustrated by BBC dramatisations). Two BBC4 programmes on Monday however were to my mind excellent. The Beauty of Books, interestingly appearing just as we are assailed by predictions of the demise of the physical book, showed us in vivid detail and with brilliant photography the physicality of our earliest manuscripts and explained the sociological forces shaping their physical properties. In The Birth of the British Novel Henry Hitchings gave us an incisive and vivid yet truly literary-sociological account. Both programmes were a return to the mode of thoughtful commentary usefully illustrated, with none of that dramatised re-enactment stuff. The one way that the latter programme pandered to contemporary trends was in plonking in a few 'star' novelists for their comments. These moments were like holes in the middle of Henry Hitchings' beautiful logical account: one really had to laugh at Martis Amis and the usually concise Will Self sitting in the pub and telling the scholarly whizz lit critic how to suck literary eggs and losing the plot in waffle - probably because they were disconcerted by the look on his face...

(Only 2 more days I think to see those 2 programmes on iplayer - I'm a bit late with this.)

Best not to be beautiful?

I commend to you a post by novelist Amanda Craig, titled 'On being a middle-aged, mid-list novelist'.  Here's how she concludes:

On the whole, good and great fiction is not written by beautiful people who feel successful. It’s written by the person who is most overlooked, all their life, and who understands things about the human condition which is very different from that of the experience of the twenty-five year old part-time model. Every author has a professional deformity – club feet, an uncomfortable religious inheritance, short stature, or incurable alcoholism, take your pick. Writers are always outsiders, and our nearest kindred isn’t someone in Hollywood but the bag-lady who rootles through dustbins muttering to herself

 - a brilliant summation, I think. Read the whole post, though: it's very measured and thoughtful.

What's the point?

Prompted by the Faber Academy discussion about Creative Writing on this blog, here's my own (ambivalent) take on one particular aspect, the teaching of the subject. It's my first post as a contributor to the online version of the excellent literary magazine The View From Here.

Faber academy discussion on writing: Ian Ellard

Today on the Faber blog, Faber Academy's Ian Ellard takes up the debate - Why write? - at its most radical level, with an historical and extremely thoughtful exploration of why on earth we actually do it. I urge you to click on over and read.

Meanwhile, it's still possible to leave any questions you may have for previous posters Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux, on the comments thread here.

Also join in on Twitter  #whywrite? #whynot

Faber Academy discussion: any questions for Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux?

The posts from Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux on creative writing generated a very interesting debate here, I thought, with a variety of both teaching and student perspectives, although I do wonder if we have yet reached the heart of some of the thornier issues. Shortly the series will move over to the Faber blog, where Faber Academy's Ian Ellard will post his thoughts. In the meantime if anyone has any questions they'd like to ask either Marcel or Sue, or both, about the issues or their own experience as writers, then do leave them in the comments thread below, and I'll post their answers on this blog.

Faber Academy discussion on Creative Writing: Marcel Theroux's view

I am pleased to publish today a contribution to this debate from Marcel Theroux, co-tutor of the upcoming Faber Academy course, Getting Started. Marcel is the author of four acclaimed novels including Far North (Faber) and is a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award (2002).

Thursday's very thoughtful piece by his fellow course leader Sue Gee brought a very lively response and several issues have emerged. Marcel now cuts to the chase:

I share the ambivalence that many people feel about the Creative Writing industry.

Arts coverage in the conventional media is shrinking; publishers are panicking about the future, digital sales and the end of the book; bookshops and libraries are threatened - and yet there's a mini-boom in courses in creative writing.

There are some really tough questions that need to be asked about them - particularly by the students.  Is it a route to publication? (No - but I have yet to meet anyone who accepts this in their heart, and the concomitant truth that publication is not the answer to all their hopes and prayers.)  Would my teacher be here if she or he had sold the film rights to their latest novel? (Probably not - and that's assuming your creative writing teacher can even get published.)  Are these courses a money-making wheeze for the institutions who run them? (Undoubtedly.)  Might I be better served by renting a cabin in the woods for two weeks and sitting there in front of a computer, or, better still, a typewriter? (Perhaps.)  What do I want to get out of this? (Harder to say...)

In Tokyo, a few years ago, I went along to a haiku club. They are popular in Japan. They met in a park, under the guidance of a teacher who assigned them specific kige - words like maple leaf, dew, and nightingale which evoke a specific season and are intrinsic to the form.  The students then spent and hour or two wandering around the park and writing half a dozen haiku.  After that, they had lunch, read the poems aloud, and their teacher made suggestions about how they might be improved.

Was it a route to publication? (No.)  Was it a money-making wheeze for the teacher? (Kind of - but not exactly on a par with hedge funds.)  Might the students have been better served by renting a cabin in the woods for two weeks? (I doubt it, but they would have probably written a lot more haiku.)  What were they getting out of it?

Well, you'd have to ask them, but I wrote a couple of haiku when I was with them, and I loved the whole experience. Oddly, the deepest pleasure of writing the poems was an ego-less one.   It's the feeling of being an instrument of the words themselves, of recognizing that maple leaf, dew and nightingale have their own loveliness and it requires no authorial genius to make them beautiful.  There's also something instructive about the conciseness of the form - it's what gives each one its poignance and gravity.

There is also a more egotistical thrill of knowing that, whatever the gulf in talent between me and Basho, Issa and Onitsura - haiku masters of the past - we are all just people with pens trying to describe the harvest moon or cherry blossom in 17 syllables.  It's a strange thing about writing - that there really is no special equipment or secret knowledge that separates the amateur from the professional. And whether or not I've improved as a haiku writer, I read the poems with a new appreciation for the difficulty of the form.

But I think probably the most uplifting thing of all is this: last week one of my haiku got picked for the Richard and Judy Haiku Club, and now Ridley Scott has just made a huge offer for the film rights! Cancel my classes! In your face everyone!

Thank you to Marcel!  Once again, readers, your own views and questions are more than welcome, and in a later post Sue and Marcel will tackle the issues raised. You can also discuss the issues on Twitter on #whywrite.

Faber Academy discussion on creative writing: Sue Gee's view

What's the point of writing? Why do we do it? And what's the point of teaching it? Is there any point in teaching it?

All the time on the web we talk about writing but these are the radical questions we rarely ask. Faber Academy is now asking them, and I'm delighted to host the discussion they've instigated, and to introduce the first of two pieces from the leaders of the upcoming Faber Academy course Getting Started. Marcel Theroux will contribute next week, and today's post comes from Sue Gee (left). Sue is the author of several acclaimed novels including the Orange Prize long-listed The Mysteries of Glass (Headline) and a forthcoming collection of short stories (Salt). Here's Sue:


'In the end, it's just you and the page.'

It was Ishiguro who said that, in a radio broadcast some years ago, and no writer ever put it better. But why should we seek that musing solitude? What is the point of creative writing?

As with any other creative activity, I would say that there is simply nothing else in life which offers what such an endeavour can: a secret life coursing through your bloodstream, an entry into another world. In writing, whether alone with the page or screen - and when you're away from them too, just thinking - it's the wrestle with words, finding the voice - that style which is right for your material. It's an engagement with something which is both mysterious and visceral, operating both in the mind and in the gut; something which both takes you away from yourself and demands that you engage yourself at the deepest level.

No one ever said it was easy - you often struggle with despair. But when it does come right, the reward is a joy like no other: the feeling of touching the real thing at last.

I actually have a bit of a problem with the term 'creative writing', and I don't think I'm alone in this. How many writers describe themselves as 'creative writers'? I don't know any. None the less, 'creative writing' has come to be associated with writing fiction, and the big question is then: But can it be taught? (No one ever asks this of painting, or sculpture, or musical composition, you notice.)

Broadly speaking, I think teachers of the art, craft and development of writing fiction - the short story and the novel - divide into two camps. The first contains those who see it as their job to generate ideas: to give exercises which will help students find material they might not otherwise have done: a psychological/emotional approach. The second, which is where I mostly locate myself, assumes that students will come to class with their own ideas, and that the tutor's task - through examples and exercises - is to offer technique, editing, appraisal. Of course they do cross over, but my experience from the first Getting Started course is that students who arrived saying that they had never written any fiction, and didn't know where to begin, had by the end developed work as original, memorable and strong as any I have encountered in many years of teaching.

A good creative writing class will inspire, nurture, develop. It will send you away to that quiet communion with the page; it will bring you back to encourage, to look for what is best in what you've written and see how you can make it better still.

Writing fiction can take you over - and if you're serious about it, it should. The short story and the novel, in their different ways, can go anywhere, and tell the profoundest truths about what it means to be human. Writing fiction can nourish, extend and excite - once you've found what you want to work on, just thinking about it can make you happy. But as someone once said: Thinking about writing is not writing. Talking about writing is not writing. Only writing is writing.

That's where everything happens.


Thank you to Sue for this. Your own views on the issues will be most welcome and in a later post Sue and Marcel will be happy to answer questions raised on the comments thread. You can also discuss the issues on Twitter on #whywrite.

Upcoming Faber Academy discussion on creative writing

I'm delighted to announce that beginning tomorrow this blog will host a Faber Academy discussion on the radical question, 'What's the point of creative writing?'

As many of you will know, the Faber Academy, a series of writing courses run by the publisher and which started only in October 2008, is now a very busy concern, running several courses a year. Here's the Academy's Ian Ellard on its aims:

People come to us at lots of different stages of their writing, looking for practical help... The emphasis is on nurturing rather than churning, on the personal, not the proscriptive.

Those who follow my author blog may remember that I attended the very first Faber Academy course at the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop on the Left Bank in Paris, tutored by the meticulous and thoughtful Tobias Hill. On that occasion several of us were fairly experienced writers, there to take stock and refresh our palates, and we had a most enjoyable and stimulating weekend, with two characterisically inspiring talks from Jeanette Winterson. (You can read about it on my other blog here - scroll down to see posts about the course.)

Many of the Faber Academy courses are inevitably for beginners, since, as Ian Ellard says, many potential writers have ambition but are 'waiting to be encouraged and nurtured.' However, he points out: 'There’s one question that, somewhere along the line, they would need to answer: What’s the point?' and this is what the upcoming discussion will focus on. Central to the discussion will be the directors and tutors of a four-month course for emerging writers, Getting Started, which begins on the 21st February: novelists Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux. Tomorrow Sue Gee will kick off by contributing her thoughts on the whole subject, and later Marcel Theroux will add his. Both will be prepared to answer any ensuing questions.

As readers of this blog will know, I have some ambivalent views about the teaching of creative writing, so this promises to be a very apt and interesting discussion...

Bestsellers and Literature

Gloomy assessment by John Dugdale of Nielson's 2010 bestseller list.

Meanwhile, let's stick our heads in the sand and think about literature. Here's a link to another recent discussion by my reading group, a comparison of two novels about Hollywood, Nathanael West's 1939 The Day of the Locust and Joan Didion's 1970 Play it as it Lays (though one of our group dropped the latter to read a Le Carre instead.)

Happy New Year, links and an upcoming discussion

Happy New Year to my readers!

A couple of links:

Over on my other blog, a discussion by my reading group (and my own views) of The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Cultural highlights of the year on the The Faber blog, including my own recommendation of The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (Oneworld Publications), which I can't recommend highly enough.

And advance notice of the fact that beginning on 6th January, I'm delighted to say, this blog will host a Faber Academy discussion on the crucial question, Why Creative Writing? with contributions from novelists Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux, directors of an upcoming Faber Academy course for new writers. Should be very interesting, and a chance to ask some fundamental questions not always addressed on the web.

Why We Don't Like the Unexpected

Here's an interesting post by Dan Green at The Reading Experience on 'innovative' fiction, and why there is such resistance to it. I urge you to read it.

Guest post at The Spectator

Here's a link to a guest post I was kindly invited to write by the The Spectator's book blog editor David Blackburn, on the publishing history of my novel The Birth Machine and the way it illustrates the extent to which factors other than literary merit can make or break books and writers.

When is a book not a book?

Novel immersion, article-writing, starting to clean dust-filled house for Christmas guests: I can't believe it's nine days since I tended to this blog. One thing I was moved to write about last week but simply didn't get time for was John Harris's article for the Guardian, in which he reports on his serious effort to read several of this year's Christmas celebrity-memoir bestsellers to 'take the national pulse', presumably to find out why they are so popular. It's a witty and enlightening article which comes to the conclusion that these books are generally infantile. However, the response he gets when he questions Waterstone's John Howells indicates that he was wasting his time, since these are not books for reading:

...he suggests I stop thinking about all this stuff in the same context as what industry types call "range" – ie the books racked in the back of the shop – and realise what I'm dealing with.

"These books are a part of mainstream entertainment," he says. "Cheryl Cole has got a book out this Christmas, she's also got a new album out, and she's all over the telly. The book is one part of a general programme for somebody like that. You could make the same argument about Gok Wan, or Paul O'Grady. Or Michael McIntyre. It's all part of a brand. These are people with a huge amount of fans, and they want to buy product." [my italics]

Units gone stale

Today I was standing in a bookshop queue behind a man who was asking if they stocked a particular title (I didn't catch which). The assistant looked it up on the computer and found that there was one copy in the warehouse, but none in the store. So far so helpful. And then he said these immortal words: 'It's ten years since that book was published. You won't find a book that old on our shelves.'

I trust he was exempting the works of great literature that are over 10 years old...

Soapbox Guest at Help! I Need a Publisher: 'Talent Will Out'?

Today I'm on the soapbox at Nicola Morgan's excellent blog, Help I Need a Publisher! explaining why claims that 'talent will out' get me so steamed up, and illustrating with a publishing scandal in which I got caught up, and which involved partially successful attempts to silence me as a writer.

Is There a Literary Boys' Club?

An amusing and/or depressing spat last week between Robert McCrum and novelist Amanda Craig. The trigger was a piece by Craig on the website of the excellent Fiction Uncovered (which I really should have blogged about and would have done so had I not been so tied up with promoting my latest publication, and you probably already know about it but if not then I shall trust you to jump on the link and speed on over there and find out about a Really Good Thing.)

Anyway, one wonders what McCrum thinks about Fiction Uncovered - an Arts-Council aided idea to seek out and promote good writers who haven't so far received the attention they deserve - since his objection to Craig's article seems out of all proportion, and indeed he seems wilfully to misinterpret her. Craig's argument is that none of her own generation has received the kind of acclaim that some in the generations either side of it have done. Here's the central paragraph in which she makes it:

Those younger than us, such as Sarah Waters, Maggie O’Farrell, Zadie Smith, Philip Hensher and Monica Ali, rose to prominence earlier and faster, fanned by national prosperity; my generation has had a long struggle to be seen at all. We have worked in the shadow of the Amis-McEwan-Barnes-Rushdie generation, and the recession of the 1980s, and by the time we published, usually in our mid-thirties, a second wave of younger talent had risen up and overtaken us.

Craig's chief point here is that the generations of writers either side of her avoided the recession which hit the generation to which she belongs, and there is an implied premise that national prosperity is good for writers' reputations and recession isn't. It's true that she also refers to the 'shadow' of the 'Amis-McEwan-Barnes-Rushdie generation' as an impediment, and it's this which McCrum jumps on, and here's how he interprets it:

Craig's complaint ... is that Amis et al have somehow prevented a generation of writers from getting their due recognition... If this boys' club had not sucked all the oxygen out of the literary ecosphere, says Craig – with no real evidence for her assertion – we would now speak of Chambers, Jensen etc in the same breath as ...

Whoa...! That's a whole load of extrapolation from one brief phrase. Maybe, since Craig goes on to point out that it is above all the women of her generation who have been most overlooked, she is implying the existence of a 'boys' club', but she accuses Amis, McEwan, Barnes and Rushdie themselves of nothing (where's the evidence for that?). Now McCrum, one of those with the power to overlook or champion talents and provide or deny the oxygen of newspaper publicity, is of course the great champion of this quartet, and his reaction seems knee-jerk enough to imply a sorely hit nerve.

He even gets insulting:

Really good writers are not troubled by brilliant contemporaries [See, Craig, he seems to be saying, if you were any good you wouldn't be moaning]... Strong talents are galvanised by rival artists not crushed by them. Or they go their own way, making their own good fortune. They are not cowed by top dogs.

Ah, those 'top dogs'! So there are top dogs - those who have somehow managed to 'suck all the oxygen out of the literary ecosphere' in spite of there being other strong talents! In resorting to the language of elitism, McCrum only brings down on himself the very suspicions he's so anxious to avoid. He goes on to object 'that there are also (among reviewers) many experts in tall-poppy syndrome, knives poised'. Tall poppies too, eh - those who have gained all the nutrients/cash and consequent attention? (Though the only example of tall-poppy-slashing he comes up with is Tibor Fischer's hatchet job on Amis's Yellow Dog.)

'If Craig and her disappointed contemporaries have had such a hard time,' he asks with a tone that smacks shockingly of playground in-crowds, 'why has it been (apparently) so easy for Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Monica Ali and Philip Hensher? Could it be that these literary arrivistes are, er, actually better?' but concludes in the very language of the pompous gentleman's club he'd like to disprove: 'Maybe posterity will be kinder to Ms Craig and her contemporaries. For the moment, the jury is still out. Harsh, but true.'

Sheesh.

Reading Roots

If you're interested in the formative reading of a Fiction Bitch, today I'm in the Reading Roots spot on Carina's Reading Through Life blog.

Thinking Not Allowed

Well, here is perhaps the most depressing sign yet of the dumbing down of our literary culture by those in charge of its wellbeing, and of their utter patronisation of readers. According to an article in Wednesday's Independent, Costa judge Jonathan Ruppin, who is the web editor at Foyles bookshop, stated that it was not a strong year for fiction this year, adding that the omission of Howard Jacobson and David Mitchell from the shortlist was due to the fact that 'their work was too cerebral to recommend to the masses'.

And there we have it, folks: out-and-out proof that in this brave new world of ours, intellect is seen as weakness and something to be kept well away from us, the 'masses'.

Thanks to Lynne Hatwell via Facebook

How to have a book launch in London when you don't even live there

First, you will have had one already, the previous year, for a different book, which was successful. For the current book you will have already had one in Manchester which was packed out, and where you sold all of the books the bookshop ordered, and more besides. This will give you confidence - although you are very aware of the unpredictability of these things, so maybe you are not so confident after all. Gird up your loins, though. First of all, be prepared to SPEND MONEY. This may seem to you crazy, ie to wipe out any profit on the books, and far more besides, before you begin, but remember: the point of the exercise is not so much to make money - something which is nowadays pretty much beside the point unless your initials are DB, eg - but to SPREAD WORD ABOUT THE BOOK. Book your return train journey. Book a hotel. Ask the bookshop to order in wine and nibbles, which you will pay for.

Begin inviting people. Start a month beforehand, in order to give plenty of notice. Send personal invitations to the following people: your personal friends and relatives who live within travelling distance of central London (this is not many), your writer and publisher friends: the two or three you have known for years, the ones you have met more recently via blogging and Facebook or on a writing course you went on once, and the several writers you know through currently having the same publisher, as well as the one or two you once published in a short-story magazine and with whom you are still in touch - altogether a good number. Be brave enough also to ask two very well-known writers you have also had dealings with in the last year or so, and don't forget your ex- but very nice agent who sold the book (which is a reissue) the first time round, and is thus part of its publishing history. Since the subject of the book is of particular interest to women (though not exclusively), contact a long list of London women's groups, and, since it has been studied on university courses contact a slightly shorter list of relevant London-based academics. And while you're at it, although it seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel (but then the object of the exercise is spreading word about the book), contact a ginormous list of London-based reading groups. Get the event on Time Out listings.

All of this will take you several mornings and afternoons glued to the computer (you will need to reply to responses, remember). You will long ago have suspended work on your novel-in-progress or given up, for the present, any idea of writing .

A fortnight before the event, set up a Facebook event. Luckily, your publisher sets one up for you as well, because he has so many more Facebook friends.

What happens? Half of your very small number of relatives say they can't make it (you don't even invite your miles-from-London relatives as they would never travel). In spite of your having invited them so early, many of your writer friends write back to say that they too are already committed that evening - mostly to teaching: it seems that most creative writing tuition takes place on Wednesday evenings! Still, some say they'll come, but, frankly, you are counting on the fingers of two people's hands, and not using all of those fingers, either.

Your old agent sends you a very nice email to say that he, too, is already committed that evening, as do your old writing friends, one of whom will be embarked that night on an American tour. Neither of the famous writers with whom you are newly acquainted replies. Squash the horrible feeling that they are laughing up their sleeves at the thought of going to your launch, and remind yourself that they are probably extremely busy. About twenty people say on your publisher's Facebook event that they'll come (hardly any say so on yours), but you know that it's just so easy to click a button to look willing, and it doesn't really guarantee that any of them will come, and one of them lives in Colombia, you notice...

By now you are panicking. Your close friends and relatives tell you that it'll be all right, people always turn up, but you are not so sure. You stop sleeping properly at night. But then, you tell yourself, there are those 15 or so people who have said they're coming. And then there are those who haven't replied: maybe they'll come in the end... Though your gut feeling is that, actually, it means the opposite.

In the days coming up to the event, you spend time Facebooking and Tweeting the event, even though you are worried about breaking the code and being just too damn self-promotional and possibly therefore counterproductive. Also you write again to those who haven't replied, just in case they have forgotten all about it because you invited them so early - squashing the worry that they will just feel hassled, which will put them right off you and your book. Some of them do write back this time, to confirm your worst fears. Then several of the people who have said they're coming write to say that now they can't. The number of definites is dwindling.

But then you get a positive response from the University of East London who will circulate details, and from representatives of three of the women's groups who say they are sure their members will be interested. And to your delight, Beverley Beech, Chair of AIMS (the Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services) writes to say she'd love to come.

You pack up your bags. Should you take some books? In Manchester the bookshop sold out, as did the bookshop at your last London launch, and on both occasions you ended up selling extra books out of your bag. It seems ridiculous this time. But then you never know: what if crowds of people off those mailing lists - and the bookshop's mailing list, and the Time Out listing - turned up? Every writer has to be prepared... So you do, you take a bag full of books as well as your other bags, and lug it on the train and the tube and up the steps of your hotel. As you are hauling it through your hotel room doorway the handle comes off, and on the way to the launch you have to buy another, and since this time you think you'd better get a stronger one, that's £50 added to the cost of the launch...

You're a little early, so you retire to Starbucks opposite the bookshop and transfer the books from your knackered bag into your new one. While you're sitting down, you look at your email. One of the writers you are expecting is not going to make it after all, as her babysitter has not turned up.

In the bookshop (Blackwell) the very nice Marcus has gone to a lot of trouble getting in the wine and nibbles and thoughtfully setting up for you in the medical section, most apt for the subject of the novel. Your heart is sinking at the thought that you will not make his efforts worthwhile.

This is what happens in the end: a few of the people who said they would come fail to do so, but a few others who said they couldn't, or didn't even reply, turn up out of the blue. Your lovely publisher comes (all the way from Cambridge in the freezing cold, her hands like ice), which makes all the difference, of course. And some of your oldest friends are there, including those who supported you all those years ago during the fraught history of the book. Although not a single other person from those mailing lists (or the events listings) is there, Beverley Beech comes, and is at the centre of intense discussions about the issues both before and after the reading. She tells you, both privately and openly during the reading, that the book is extremely current because the situation it deals with - that of the over-control of the obstetric profession - has got worse in the years since the first edition was published.

It's a small gathering, but it's a keen and involved one, and you are most surprised when at the end of the evening Marcus tells you that he is pleased with the number of books sold.

You even sell one copy out of your bag, because a dear writing friend arrives too late (and out of breath) to buy one from the shop!

And you are just arriving back at your hotel when your phone goes, and your son whose birth inspired the novel wants to know if you're all right, and you are all right, but so relieved of all the tension that you burst into tears...

(Pics here.)

*Crossposted to Elizabeth Baines blog.

Good and Bad Editing

On the occasion of the announcement of the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award, the BBC News Magazine resurrects the debate around an earlier comment by Claire Armitstead, chair of the judging panel and literary editor of the Guardian, that the books submitted for the prize had shown a general lack of editing in today's publishing processes.

I must say, far too many times now when I read novels the spell of the story is broken for me by some howler or other: for instance, in two books recently (one of them Andrea Levy's Small Island) I came across the non-ironic assertion that in Britain the leaves on the trees in autumn turn first red then yellow, and on both occasions the story of the novel was immediately displaced for me by speculation about the editors involved, and an image of them sitting at their desks, or maybe, no, chatting on their iphones: had they not really read the book properly? Or were they so young and urban that they didn't even know that this was a mistake? Or care? But don't they have trees in London? Don't they ever look up from their cappuccinos? OK, OK, I know it's an unfair image, but it's the one that came...

But then rooting out such factual/mechanical errors was traditionally the role of the copyeditor, (a figure whom I understand is rapidly disappearing from publishing), and what Armitstead is more importantly concerned with is the dying role of the editor as a mentor in storytelling:

Writers set out wanting to tell their story in their way. Sometimes they don't think about what it's going to be like actually reading it. The editor's job is to point out where they're going off track… what I felt is that editors are not intervening.

This hits the nail on the head. Writers worth their salt should always write with a sense of how their writing is going to be read, but there needs to be someone with a more objective eye judging whether or not a piece works, and if not suggesting how it would work better. Proper editing takes time, as is pointed out in the BBC article, and it's not difficult to see therefore how the role of the editor can suffer due to marketing restraints. As is also pointed out, writer and editor need to develop the kind of long-term working relationship unavailable in a culture of publisher-hopping in search of better deals.

Above all, though, radical editing requires sensitivity, and a commitment to the author's - or at least the story's - aims. This has been very much on my mind recently, as my first novel is currently being reissued with the original structure - radically changed by the first publisher - reinstated. The editing that that book was given by a feminist publisher the first time round was quite simple, but extreme: chapter 4 was moved to the beginning and changed from past to present tense, destroying, as far as I was concerned, my careful seduction of the reader via a gradual change of tone and perspective into sharing the experience presented in that chapter. This may have made it a better book for that particular publisher's market - a book with which they judged women readers could instantly identify - but I had never intended it as such a book, and the story I wanted to tell was different from the one which this simple but drastic measure created. (You can read about it in more detail on my author blog here.)

But then that's the thing with editing. It's such a powerful tool, it's such a role of responsibility. It's a distinguished profession with important skills we'd be the poorer to lose...

Signs of the Times

...or rather, of the industry? W H Smith in Manchester Arndale centre this afternoon:

Jonathan Franzen and The Great American Novelist

Here's a picture of - what? A man pouring himself a glass of water. Or no, a man hiding from the camera. Or maybe a man who knows he can't hide from the camera. (Is that why he is grinning?) (Or is that why, in the end, he seemed to get a bit irritated with the camera?) He will say in the next few moments that he knows he needs to be careful what he says because next thing it'll turn up on a blog. And here it is, the picture anyway. Of a man who has just read to a great crowd in the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and knows he's about to be quizzed on the fact that he has been designated the Great American Novelist and on the Author as Personality and Cultural Phenomenon, and all he really wants to talk about is his novel, and if his novel could only just wing its way into the world without him he'd be a damn sight happier. I think.

Anyway, the most interesting moment for me in all that talk was what he said before he even began reading, which was that his intention in writing The Corrections and Freedom (both door-stoppers) was to write a sustained narrative in a time of atomised narratives. It's the kind of statement that hits you between the eyes as the statement, the most relevant and interesting for now, and in my opinion its unpackaging could have filled the whole evening, but there we were hearing Franzen, head down and his eyes shielded by those horn-rimmed specs, asked for his reaction to the GAN thing (no fun, he said, to land in a country where that's being flagged about you: the only way is down), how he felt about all the publicity (it's such a contrast to the privacy of the writing experience, he told us drily, that it was helpfully unreal. It's just a novel, he said, as he has on other occasions, he just hopes you enjoy it and don't take it too seriously). He was asked what he thought about the fact that the writer is expected to be a nice person (which to me seemed rather a strange question: nice? rather than glamorous etc?, and I don't even remember his answer: my notes, which I can't read, seem to include 'sometimes irritable'). For me the whole event was imbued with a strange sense of dislocation which I think was the dislocation between the general thrust of the questioning and the novelist's own interest.

In one moment when the attention did turn to the novelist's art, Franzen was asked about his use of multiple viewpoints, and his answer was very interesting. He himself had multiple viewpoints on all sorts of issues, he said, and the thing that is great about the novel as a form is that it is able to give full life to irreconcilable contradictions.

And as far as I'm concerned the extract he read was fabulous.

More on the 'Present'

A letter from Peter McDonald in yesterday's Guardian articulates some of the issues that have lain pretty well unstirred in the recent debate about the use of 'present tense' in novels. (I can't find it online, so no link I'm afraid.)

'Why is so much literary talk in the English-speaking world so facile and unambitious?' he begins by asking, and points out that while John Mullan ostensibly took issue with Philip Pullman's objections to the current uses of PT, Mullan nevertheless concurred that it's 'an evasion of narrative responsibility'. McDonald remarks of this: 'It is difficult to imagine a more finely balanced blend of late-Victorian aestheticism and moralism... We are back in the gas-lit critical climate of the 1980s.'

He goes on:

Compare all this with what Roland Barthes wrote about narrative time in the late 1940s... He saw the present as a way of escaping the easy sense-making allure of traditional past tense modes... [The past tense] constitutes a direct affront to the "unreal time of cosmogonies, myths, history and novels".

I think that's the whole point: that fiction is released from worldly time, and that to talk in terms of 'present' and 'past' tenses in fiction can be reductive and beside the point.

Ironically, in view of the fact that he writes fantasy novels, Pullman's comments do seem to stem from an outdated sense of there always being a real, true story behind all the other possible stories, the one for which the author 'takes narrative responsibility', a sense which is closely linked to the realist concept of the story as fact. As Barthes pointed out, the traditional use of the past tense is that which can best create this illusion, the sense that what we are reading here is the authoritative version. (Perhaps it's significant that Pullman writes for children.)

Personally, I'm interested in fictions that challenge this notion of narrative authority, and try to write them, and quite frankly find unauthorative narratives that don't. As Pullman himself acknowledged, there are many versions of the past, and therefore of any story, located in the different perceptions and memories of those who experienced it. Each of those persons has their own (often very different) 'past tense' story, after all, and novels can be great at showing up their contingency - just look at past-tense first-person multiviewpoint novels or a past-tense intimate third novel like The Corrections.

As for the 'present' tense: Vanessa Gebbie explains in the comments thread on my previous post that Philip Hensher objects to the use of the 'casual anecdote' mode of present tense in contemporary novels. In fact this precise mode was used brilliantly in Trainspotting, but the voice was that of a narrator not the author; far from abdicating narrative responsibility, via this voice the author was portraying and anatomizing the particular social and psychic (and thus temporal) entrapment of his characters. No doubt there is an army of poor imitators, but I can't say I've come across many published ones. Furthermore, the 'present' tense can be used in other sophisticated ways. I'm not a linguist so I don't know the terms, but I can imagine that linguists describe the various uses as distinct tenses in themselves (rather than the simple/simplistic 'present'). The 'casual anecdote' mode is only one form of the historic present in which it's unequivocally acknowledged that the events being described happened in the past (for the characters) but they are related in the present tense in a way that 're-lives' them and thus makes them especially vivid. But there are subtle ways in which you can use it - to show that such 're-creation' can be suspect, for instance. Present-tense portrayal of memory is even less simply 'historic', creating a more continuous temporal reality, since memories are indeed 'present', always with us, even while the events memorized are 'past', in fact continuously recreating the past (Pullman himself refers to an especially vivid instance of this use in Jane Eyre). Not to mention the possible use of the present tense to describe either an unavoidable or a putative future ('We go to the train at four-thirty' or 'we watch the sea swallow the continent') ('future present'?).

In other words, the ways to which such modes can be put are the ways that novels can free us from the straitjacket of obvious 'fact' and bring us onto the more magical and dynamic levels of possibility...

Richard and Judy, the Expensive Couple

The new costs of entering prizes, and now the new costs of a Richard and Judy recommendation:

I've now been brought the paper copy of the article by Tom Baldwin in Saturday's Times about the the new Richard and Judy book club (which I wasn't prepared to pay to see online). The article is occasioned by a complaint lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority over TV commercials linking the new book club - which the Times says it has discovered requires a payment to W H Smith of £25,000 for a recommendation - with the earlier Channel 4 book club which producer Amanda Ross says never asked for money. Ross is quoted as saying: 'In the past we have certainly picked publishers who could not afford £25,000 or anything like that.' Commitment to the £25,000 fee and to supplying chosen books to W H Smith at a 'substantial discount' as well as paying 'a further 50p for every sale at one of its stores' are conditions of inclusion on the R & J list. A spokeswoman for W H Smith is quoted as saying: 'This is a standard arrangement.'

Yes, I guess that sadly now it is, and it won't surprise me if the standard of the R & J list plummets...

Present Tense.

Gratified to see that, further to my post re the present tense, yesterday John Mullan outlined some of the sophisticated and dynamic uses to which the historic present can be put in novels - which I'd have liked to have done myself but was too involved in my own partly present-tense novel.

Stories about Stories and the Cost of Storytelling

Hilarious - and telling - that the current interviews with Jonathan Franzen trot out the story that while writing 'The Corrections', as well as using earplugs he wore a blindfold and touch-typed, when to my knowledge he has denied this as the literal truth.

I was in the audience when he came to Waterstone's Deansgate in Manchester with The Corrections and someone asked him point-blank if it were true about the blindfold. Franzen explained that he had been talking metaphorically about the need for a writer (or his need anyway) to shut off the outside world in order to write, and that the journalist he'd been talking to at that time had taken it literally and others had run with it.

And they're still running with it. Does Franzen go on allowing them to take it literally when they mention it, or is it now just now set in stone in the records they look up? Either way, it's an indication of the importance nowadays of colourful meta-stories in the marketing of books.

Or else I'm remembering wrongly what he said that time in Waterstone's and someone can correct me (ahem).

On another note, I've been informed that The Times yesterday had an interesting article on the cost nowadays to any publisher entering books for the new Richard and Judy book club. I'm not prepared to pay to check it out online, but others may be if they haven't already read it...

Present Rules

Sometimes when you're writing you just think: for God's sake, will people stop talking about how to do it! Because a) as Charlie Brooker has recently indicated, sometimes thinking about it too much it is just not conducive to actually doing it which can require huge dollops of intuition rather than intellect and b) because too often the talk implies rules and too many rules end up in proscription, and another thing you need in huge dollops is confidence and a sense of freedom. And before you object that there are rules and that writing is a craft as much as an art, with techniques to be learnt: I know, I know: I agree!! But the way I see it is that you learn the rules so well you take them for granted, in fact can start to break them, and after that what every writer, however experienced, really needs, are (mainly psychic) stratagems for freeing up their imagination and achieving originality in their writing.

And there's a third problem, c), with all this rule-bound chatter, especially when it's indulged in by well-known writers: what they're often doing is simply banging the drum for their own kind of writing and (by implication) denigrating other modes of writing from a standpoint which is hardly impartial (though too often taken as such).

When the news broke last week that Philip Pullman had condemned the current use of the present tense in novels, my stomach gave a lurch, I can tell you, as I'm using the present tense in my WIP, though not exclusively. I was tempted to join the debate and point out some of the subtle and wholly dynamic uses to which the present tense can be put in novels (and which as far as I could see were being overlooked), but, putting my duty to my work first, I decided to refrain from analysis and preserve the more intuitive frame of mind I needed for the writing, and to keep up my confidence in what I was doing by tuning out the critical voices.

Just as well: in today's Guardian Philip Pullman is at pains to explain that the reports had oversimplified his remarks. And in spite of myself I did read his article, and here are my pathetically writing-immersed responses:

He does begin by admitting that he said that 'the present tense in fiction has been getting more and more common in fiction, and I didn't like it.' (Stomach wrench from me.) But then he goes on to say: 'Like any other literary effect, the present tense is an expressive device; but expression works by contrast'. (Me: Yess! That's how I'm using it: as a contrast! Phew.) Pullman goes on to quote from a present-tense passage in Jane Eyre, which he says 'works beautifully because it emerges from the context of a narrative told in the past tense' and 'conveys as nothing else could the pressure of her feelings as she recalls the intensity of that summer evening.' (Me: yes, exactly: this is one of the best ways we can write about both intensity of feeling and memory. By this point in the article I'm feeling affirmed...)

But what happens then? Pullman goes on the attack. What he's attacking are novels written entirely in the present tense, which he compares with the (also reprehensible) increasing use of the hand-held camera. He says, 'I want all the young present-tense storytellers ... to allow themselves to stand back and show me a wider temporal perspective.' He understands why so many don't: the postmodern (though he doesn't call it that) concern with lack of certainty, with the worry 'Who are we to say that this happened and then that happened? Maybe it didn't ... there are other points of view, truth is always provisional, knowledge is always partial.' But while he understands it, he doesn't accept it: he calls it 'an abdication of narrative responsibility' and states that 'the storyteller ... should take charge of the story and not feel shifty about it.'

Well, my response to that is to wonder: isn't it an abdication of authorial responsibility NOT to want to address those uncertainties? And isn't Pullman just saying he doesn't like writing that's not like his own? And what's he doing making proscriptive rules for those who don't write as he does? And I'm trying really hard not to let it knock me off balance, as I'm writing about those very uncertainties...

Another Bites the Dust

Now it's Charlie Brooker's turn to decide that the internet has been destroying both his writing time and his attention span, and that he must retrain himself and cut down his time online.

(If anyone here is interested, on my other blog I'm charting my progress at trying to do the same while very much needing to use the internet for publicity for a new publication.)

Gotta love Charlie Brooker: recently he dared to say what very few writers would, but what I suspect most writers secretly think: that he doesn't want to advise anyone else about their writing beause a) he doesn't really know how he does it, it's like riding a bike, really and b) why would any writer trying to make it in a literary world where there's only room for the few go and help others to turn out potentially better than himself?

It Takes a Man to Say These Things

When Jodi Picoult and Lionel Shriver (or any other women writers) say it, it's too likely to look like sour grapes, but today in the Guardian Pankaj Mishra argues thoughtfully that for the establishment 'great' only ever signifies 'the passionate ambition of white men, never women.'

Mishra is also concerned with other prejudices beside gender: for arbiters like Time magazine, he says, 'literature is summed up by the big, panoptic novel about the American, usually suburban condition, not the formally resourceful poem and short story or intellectually rigorous essay.'

It's interesting, too, that he points out the often suburban concerns of the 'great' male American novel, since the general perception is that 'suburban' is one of the sub-characteristics for which women's literature is deemed generally lesser.

Also in the Guardian today, in the same edition in which Andrew Motion, chair of this year's Booker panel, complains about the poor editing the judges encountered (as did Claire Armitstead recently regarding the Guardian First Book Award), there's a very interesting letter from Chris Parker which I think is worth quoting:

...falling editorial standards is shared by editors themselves. As well as having to correct the most basic spelling and punctuation mistakes made by authors "educated" since the mid-70s, editors are frequently asked by publishers to copyedit and proofread (two distinct processes) at the same time. Before the 1990s, a typescript would be subjected, before typesetting, to a rigorous copyediting process, then proofread (often by two people) to ensure that all the copyeditor's changes had been implemented. We are now asked by most publishers to "cast a quick eye" over proofs which have been set straight from authors' disks, bypassing the editorial process altogether.

Self-promotion and Underpromotion

The Not the Booker Prize over on the Guardian books blog has raised the very interesting question of the role of social networking in making books known. (Must say, stuck in my literary purdah in the Welsh hills I hadn't even caught that the Prize was going on in the first place - the Guardian blog page takes five minutes to load up in the mountain, if it loads up at all, that is - leave alone had the ability to rally my mates and fans to nominate my book, if I could bring myself to do such a thing, so I guess that tells you something.)

And Lionel Shriver gets her teeth into the issue of male versus female novelists and gives it a good shake, arguing that female writers never receive the kind of accolades awarded to their male counterparts, and suffer from an infantilizing 'prettification' by marketing departments:

...trussing up my novels as sweet, girly and soft is like stuffing a rottweiler in a dress