Spare the little ones

Sometimes I admit that there is reasonable occasion for contemporary literature (though I'd maintain it's usually in about two years, when the hype has worn off).

A couple of weeks ago I went to a talk at the Festival Hall as part of the Orange Prize, making use of a ticket a friend of mine seemed to have bought without quite understanding what it was for. As to who won this year, I still don't actually know and in truth, would remain reasonably whole if I never found out. I only remember the startling claim by Kate Mosse that three of the books on the shortlist were attributable to one agent and three to one editor, which reduced my rather slight interest in the outcome to outright apathy.

So what is the secret of being published, for an aspiring first novelist? If there could have been one, no-one in the room would have found out, in a Q & A that strictly observed the single commandment Though Shalt Not Break Their Little Writerly Hearts. After a fairly clear discussion about what agents and publishers were looking for (essentially, a good novel, with perhaps some assurance that a second would be on the way), the Q and A session picked up on the point. "So," said a member of the audience, "a friend of mine tells me that I shouldn't mention in my covering letter that the novel I'm about to write is part of a sequence of nine. But I think an agent might be really excited by that fact. What do you think?" [Say yes! Please say yes!]

On the face of it, there could have been several truthful and succinct answers to this young woman's question:

• Please don't do that.
• Hey, it's your funeral.
• Have you even been listening?
• WTF?
• [Laughter, falling off chair]
• So you're two novels better than J.K. Rowling?

To be fair, this last piece of numerology was neutrally presented by the representative of Curtis Brown, though this may have been when her guard was down; or possibly she hadn't yet fully adjusted to the baby-sitting tone of the discussion. But the consensus answer eventually achieved by the panel was more along the lines of :

• Why not?
• That sounds a lovely idea. Nine lovely novels. Well done you. How super. You are clever, aren't you? Who's a clever writer? You are! Well done you. Nine novels, you've thought about writing. Gosh, and I've only written one...
• Of course we'd seriously consider representing a set of nine unwritten novels from an unknown would-be novelist! Well, we're not usually interested in fantasy fiction, but there's always a first time!

Note to self: I must remember to take the dummy out my mouth before I go to a writer's event like that again.

Smoke

It seems to have taken an age, but finally the scaffolding has come down from outside a great London institution - the website of Smoke - A London Peculiar. After a considerable hiatus since the last issue of the magazine was published (was it really 2010? No, really?) the magazine has metamorphosed into a smart website of quirky and informed local writing, knitted together by Matt Haynes' joyful house style. There are also plans for Smoke books on London themes. Please have a look - you might feel inspired. I'd almost blame you if you weren't...

a shy little post about, uh, titles

One curious aspect of writing novels is that the title seems often the greatest secret in the work. Shyness seems to prevent writers from referring to their works in progress by the title firmly established in their head - they might know that it's called "Traffic", must be called "Traffic", and they have visualised "Traffic" appearing on the shelves - but they will refer to it to other writers only as the (mumble) y'know, traffic warden novel", taking further care to clearly enunciate it in lower case, as if to name it is to hex it. Well, I do anyway...

The Shop A Creative Hotline

I have a minor addiction to reading online American media, if only because it casts life elsewhere into a different context (they say that planet earth is famously beautiful from space). Frankly, this peccadillo would rarely intersect with the agenda of this blog, but I was struck by this article in the New York Times this week. Not so much the article itself - a defence of the creative niche, which could easily be accused of being distilled to the point of triteness - but rather for some of the comments upon it. You don't have to scan very far down to realise that for man, establishing a creative niche is somehow akin to cheating; to invent an umbrella is to cheat your responsibility to get wet like your neighbours. Well, if I follow this idea through, the definition of a fair society would be one where everyone dashes themselves against the rocks equally, and then derives an English sense of inner peace from their neighbour being exactly as unhappy as they are.

The dystopian futures of reading

Now I shouldn't say this, as the only format for which my stories are currently on sale is the iPhone, but I'm not yet convinced that this is the future of reading - or if it is, I'm not necessarily convinced it's as happy a future as the ones we've reached already. I am a supporter of new technology though, so in a spirit of optimism I've thought hard, and I've decided there are at least three scenarios in which you would be very grateful for reading on a smart phone. To enumerate:

My novel was writ on paper

Clearly novels have gone through fat and thin phases over time. I'm told that in post-war period, the shortness of many novels had a lot to do with the increasing cost of paper (or tired writers; from 1920 right up to the advent of metrification, we had to measure out our lives in coffee spoons.) Generally though, writing doesn't seem much dependent on the medium. As far as I can tell from exhaustive searches at the great libraries of the world, paper had long existed before the word 'platform' existed to describe what words take shape on. I've come to think that aesthetics matter not a jot beyond the first few pages and the only real constraint is practicality. So yes, a novel can be written on a roll of wrapping paper, index cards, a laptop, a smartphone, a typewriter, a dictaphone, post it notes, the walls of your padded cell, ansaphone machines, till receipts, bank statements, a source code editor, your blog, backs of envelopes, napkins, the palms of your hands, tapestries , and via word processors, text messages, emails, scrabble letters, pictures, your own blood, someone else's blood, or sweat and tears (not so effective), tattoos, Facebook updates, pen, pencil, crayon, knitting needles, piped icing sugar, graffiti, or your grave. John Keats even writ his name on water, though that may not work for us.

Primary concerns

So I'm joining the kindle generation. I might add that I have not the slightest interest in downloading anything from Amazon - and why would I, when I'm a cheapskate and second hand books are so much cheaper? - so this particular sale will not only be a loss leader for them but a loss outright. I'm buying it purely so I can read my friend's marathon musical copyright novel a little more easily than I can from a PC screen, and free downloads from Project Gutenberg become a little easier to squeeze into my day. There are of course rival technologies, but I don't want a keyboard, a touch screen, voice recognition, universal translation or Star Trek tricorder capability. The only secondary function old fashioned paper books had for me was supporting the legs of the table I used to use as a desk, and I never asked for more. I suppose there might have been be an iPhone app for that too, but in the end my solution was to get a proper desk.

Well, that's me done for today. I'm off to hunt down a woolly mammoth for my lunch.

The importance of being brutal

How does one respond to positive feedback? Most normally, Blogger spots it and marks it as the spam it undoubtedly is. So if I receive a 'Insightful article. Very interesting and informative. Thank You.'  from 'Urdu Translation Services', these days it does not go to my head. If they really wanted to reel me in, they'd treat me mean...

Writing without irony

As I sat listening to my colleague today fairly hammering the keys of his keyboard, it occurred to me that he had probably learned to type on a typewriter decades ago, and had simply never realised that a keyboard is not a system of levers; that there are no letter heads that have to be whammed against the screen. It's amazing how unadaptable human beings are. Once we learn to write with one hand, we could never conceive of writing with the other. I grew up writing stories in a certain style which is probably wearily familar to those who know my work, and it's not so easy to bust out of it.

Dickens Is Dead (But Still Prolific)

A quick (and late) shout for Are You Sitting Comfortably, Thursday 23rd Feb, at Jacksons Lane Theatre:

White Rabbit invites you in, away from the swirling London fog and the clutches of Jack Frost’s icy fingers. Cosy down and enjoy original short stories for adults in a magical atmosphere, read aloud by Bernadette Russell, Gareth Brierley and special guest readers.

...including one of my own, inevitably, and I'm told one by Zoe of the Mind and Language blog, which I recommend an excursion to. Also, to a particular friend who is peculiarly allergic to descriptions of fog, I can only say that the fog in my own story is simulated and harmless.

Am I a writer if a tree falls in the forest and...

Are you a writer if you're not actively writing?

Deep, man. A friend posed this a little while back, in the rhetorical fashion. As I remember, all of us readily agreed with sentiment; after all, it's about slogging and grafting, not coasting. But I can't help thinking the question has a telling ring of 'if a tree falls in the forest' about it, and much like that old favourite, I think the answer entirely depends on your terms.

I've had a think about it (it takes me a while) and I've come to the conclusion:

The objective correlative

So once again, I ally myself with the hordes by talking about things I know bobbins about.

Am I a charlatan for not quite getting Hamlet? It seems more celebrated for its contribution to the English language than for whatever it is actually about. T.S. Eliot baldly declared the play an artistic failure, taking apart the play in an essay Hamlet and his Problems. In this essay he argued that the the play failed to show the emotions and ideas expressed by the the character Hamlet:

The art of apple eating to illustrate the passage of time

In the beginning, all action was fast paced. If you could have been in the Garden of Eden, before that unfortunate incident with the apple, you would surely have seen Adam zipping about like a child overdosed on Sunny Delight, hurtling from one screwball caper to the next. I've never quite got past the suspicion that the world is running more slowly now that it has nearly seven billion people on it. No wonder the lunchtime queue in Tescos is so long.
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Lit crit of the week, #3

"I didn't fall asleep - I just started to think about death."

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The Myth of The Basement Office

Ten Openings That Never Went Anywhere - #4

They stared at the screen together.

Across a vast, snow-covered square so large that the ends were lost in the sky, innumerable ranks of grey-green figures stood in tight rows, from the cameraman seemingly all the way to the blanket white clouds. In the distance, along one side of the square, a square black limousine struggled like a beetle, almost broken by the weight of the enormous portrait of the Dear Leader it sustained. It was only the sheer scale of the scene that revealed any sign of humanity. Rows of mourners that in any smaller number would have appeared drilled with laser-like precision revealed the subtlest kinks in the foreshortened middle distance. Perspective could be harsh.