Libraries: not life or death, apparently

We're all aware that there's enormous anger about councils up and down the land planning to close libraries to save money. No doubt many of you have signed petitions in protest, or joined in mass book-borrowings and similar gestures. Here in Oxfordshire, 20 of the county's 43 libraries stand in peril - I refer you to my post last month about Philip Pullman's passionate speech in defence of the role of libraries (see also Michael Morpurgo in his recent Richard Dimbleby lecture). Of course, there's some pretty forceful correspondence going on in our local newspapers and even though the County Council has now said they will review the situation (Playing for time? Hoping we'll all go away?), I was horrified by the patronising and complacent tone of leader Keith Mitchell in the letters page of The Oxford Times last week. This is what he replied to a certain Dr Diana Sanders: 'I am only sorry that your love of library buildings, collections, reference books and maps does not extend to the human beings - young and vulnerable, old, disabled, with learning disabilities or mental health problems - who will have to endure extra cuts if we were to exempt libraries. No one will die if there are a few fewer libraries in Oxfordshire.'

I'll give you a few moments, to allow your blood to come down from boiling point, shall I?

Where do I start to describe how wrong all of this is? Why does his tone have to be so sneering? He is a public servant, is he not? I'm sure we're all thinking 'No one will die if there are a few fewer overpaid council officials ...'

Why does he claim that to love books and literary resources somehow makes you misanthropic to the degree that you do not care for the poor and needy? Are the two interests mutually exclusive? Does he view all book-lovers as crouched in candlelit studies, poring over precious manuscripts, pince-nez perched in front of beady eyes, while ragged beggars cluster outside our gates, palms outstretched? Are we saying 'Let them eat vellum?'

The cost of libraries and library services is relatively small in the scheme of things. I'm sure I don't need to reiterate what Messrs Pullman and Morpurgo and many others have said about the value of a professionally managed resource of knowledge, about access to all, about the psychological and cultural importance of books, about our nation's need to take pride in our heritage and its duty to help its people to fulfil their potential. Fulfilling potential and meeting needs is not just about disabled access or council social services (which, by the way, are also taking massive hits, including closures of youth centres in Oxfordshire and the Oxford Carers' Centre), but about hearts and minds, about enriching knowledge, awareness, a connection with the past and with each other.

Ironically, Mr Mitchell had picked on the wrong person. Dr Diana Sanders works for the NHS, counselling the terminally ill. She herself has endured a heart and lung transplant. So she knows about health problems and she knows about empathising with others. He has apologised in this week's Oxford Times, but I do think a more prolonged diet of humble pie would do him some good.

Philip Pullman's call to defend 'the republic of reading'

You're probably aware of the rising tide of bewildered rage and campaigning fury across England and certainly in my local region, Oxfordshire, at the prospect of the closing of library branches. In Oxford city alone, Summertown, Headington, Old Marston, Littlemore, Blackbird Leys and Kennington are due to close - and this is to say nothing of branches outside the city. The Council advocates that everybody makes their way to Oxford's Central Library, blithely ignoring those who are strapped for bus fares, strapped for time, struggle to find child care, or are physically disabled.

Or, maybe they won't close them: a poisoned chalice is offered us. Yes, you may keep your branch libraries, on the condition that you run them yourselves. All very well and good in nice bourgeois areas, perhaps less likely in deprived ones. So, er, what if you're struggling to find a book or a resource? Isn't it fairly important to be able to turn to a professional, someone who is fully trained and cognisant with sources, locations and connections? If I pop up to the John Radcliffe Hospital with heart palpitations, do I expect to be treated by somebody who likes reading medical books and once did a first aid course, but doesn't have any other qualification?

The council will of course bleat that they have to cut such services as libraries in order to preserve more necessary services - but this sort of excuse just makes my blood boil. We never seem short of money to send officials on junkets and fact-finding missions, to advertise non-jobs whose descriptions and pay-rates beggar belief. To say nothing of unimaginable expenditure on bank-bailouts and pointless wars.

When I was a child, it was an utter joy to go down to the local village library and work my way along the shelves, reading anything and everything that came my way. I expanded my imagination and my knowledge. I made serendipitous discoveries. One of my dearest friends has been a librarian all her working life - is all her experience, her dedication, her enthusiasm to be devalued in this way?

We all seem to be existing these days in a state of gasping indignation: What? They're planning what? They wouldn't! They mustn't! We sign petitions against selling publicly-owned forests (if you haven't as yet, please do!), and now to save a service which since the nineteenth century has been a source of national pride: check out The Bookseller's Fight For Libraries campaign - go to http://www.thebookseller.com/ or to the Fight for Libraries facebook page, or follow them on Twitter - @fight4libraries.

Finally, I urge you to read Philip Pullman's speech, given in Oxford last week, and posted at http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/save-oxfordshire-libraries-speech-philip-pullman : it's a wonderfully articulate explosion of indignation, which not only defends libraries but celebrates the power of reading itself. He witheringly condemns the council for its lack of respect: thinking 'the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea', he expresses hate of 'the bidding culture' where all sorts of good causes are forced to compete with one another for limited resources, he talks of his own relationship with libraries, celebrating what goes on 'in that wonderful space that opens up between the reader and the book', and he worries that government and publishers fail to see value in any other than financial terms: 'the only measure is profit'. He reminds us that libraries are a reminder that 'there are things above profit.'

I hope he won't mind my quoting from him: please do read the whole article. Find out what's happening in your locality: libraries are precious. Don't take this erosion of a vital service in our society lying down.

Dental Angst and Diagram Delight

Well, God knows I need cheering up. Had root canal treatment on Tuesday. On Wednesday, tooth ached. Never mind, I thought, it's just a bit narky after the treatment: it'll settle. It didn't. Phoned dentist yesterday, saw him today and had an uber-fun session. He extracted the root seals, cleaned everything out. Ow. And Ow. I'm now on antibiotics because there's an infection there and my face hurts lots and lots. Can't even comfort eat - how unfair is that?

So what can lift my mood? Well, first of all, bookings are coming in for the new fictionfire courses in the spring, so I'm delighted about that.

Secondly, it's that time of year again, when the Bookseller runs its annual competition for the Diagram Prize for the weirdest title published during the year. This year's shortlist has just been announced and you can vote  at http://www.thebookseller.com/ until 26th March. To be honest, I don't think this year's list is as good as in some previous years (check out my Diagram blog posts under the Quirks and Funnies label) - but that may be the toothache talking.

Here's the shortlist:

Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?

What kind of sense does that final one make? I like the Collectible Spoons - but spoon-boxes featured strongly in a title a couple of years ago, and there was a title 'How Green were the Nazis?' back then, so I think things cutlerian (have I just invented a word?) and Teutonic may well be played out. Currently my frontrunner is The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Sounds like it would make a good Tim Burton movie.

Now, my people, I'm off to take more paracetamol and groan, while clutching my lower jaw. Poor me. Poor poor me.

What about the writing?

First of all, thanks to all those who attended my second fictionfire course a couple of weeks ago - I really enjoyed it and am now planning new courses. It looks like I'll be running them in May next year, so if there are any creative writing subjects that interest you, do get in touch at info@fictionfire.co.uk. Also, do keep popping over to the fictionfire site because I'm having fun with the Quote of the Week section, where I write a little riff on a writing-related quotation that's caught my attention.

What caught my attention today on the Bookseller website was an article describing how Waterstone's Piccadilly held a seminar for agents late last month, at which agents were introduced to the chain's buying team and informed about the firm's buying 'hub'. One of the useful pieces of information they were given was that there are, apparently, four key considerations when it comes to ordering in books for the stores. Here they are, with my understanding of what each means in brackets: track record (i.e. has the author written before, what sort of sales did they achieve?), support from the publisher (is there going to be any sort of marketing spend, the sort of thing where publishers pay for books to go in the window displays, join the 3 for 2s, etc),  market context (is the subject of the book 'hot' just now, is it in a clearly defined genre, does it have a clearly defined readership, is it like anything else that's popular at present?) and pricing/cover (no need to explain).

Now, dear readers, you may be feeling there's one other important consideration missing from this list - and the agents, bless them, were alive to this. 'What about the writing?' they asked. One attendee said, 'They reassured us but for Waterstone's not to mention content as a key consideration was a shock. They are not Tesco.'

No, but getting there.

Here, it seems, is how the book industry works: judgement is from the outside in. EPOS sales records, celebrities famous for something else, genre bandwagons etc. As writers who produce, mad obsessional fools that we are, the 'product' for the market, we in our innocence tend to make judgement calls from the inside out: is the writing any good? Have I seduced the reader with gorgeous language, compelling characters, a gripping yarn? Have I expressed my deepest emotions, interests and concerns? Have I actually managed to generate 80,000 words of logical, coherent prose? Yay me! Have I revised and polished that prose so it gleams? It's hard for us to be as hard-nosed as the chain buyers. So, keep on writing what you want to write, keep on caring about its quality - but when you come to send it out, try to define your 'market context' and pray for a publisher prepared to support it so that you get the chance to establish that track record.

Borders bowing out?

First the good news: I checked out the website of the Bridport Prize yesterday and yes, my name is indeed on the shortlist; it wasn't all a dream. Very uplifting - I just wish they'd managed to spell my name correctly ...

Today all sorts of rumours have abounded but it does seem to be true: Borders has gone into administration. The signs have been there for quite a while: I was amazed to see more and more floorspace open up in the Oxford store. I kept thinking - if you pay a fortune to rent space by the square metre why wouldn't you want to fill it with goods to sell? The children's department suffered horribly. In the world of books they have a ghastly term: destocking. It strikes a chill into the heart of every reader, every writer.

Then the destocking changed to the stocking of well, what Sir Alan Sugar might call 'a load of old tut'. Shelf after shelf of feather-edged, sequin-bedecked jewellery boxes and stands. Stuff like that. In a bookshop? I have no problem with coffee concessions and stationery and cards being sold in a bookshop - but fluffy boudoir gifties? NO!

The writing was on the wall - increasingly desperate offers, limited range and staff who looked like they'd lost the will to live. Now administration. Echoes of Zavvi and Woolies last year.

Locally, I liked the Borders store. I liked its long opening hours, the author events they put on, the Paperchase franchise, and, when it opened a few years back, the range they had. I also like Waterstone's and Blackwells, both of which are very close to Borders in the heart of Oxford. I like bookshops, full stop, and have been upset at the loss of the range of browsable, eccentric second-hand stores in the city. Chain bookshops have had their faults and still do: the endless 3 for 2s, the lack of daring with range, the frustration with central buying, the treating of books like ...

but wait! Who really treats books like baked beans? Enter the supermarkets, who have squeezed the chains as the chains once squeezed the independents. Supermarkets who with their enormous spending power have made publishers turn craven, granting terms that benefit nobody - not the publisher, not the chains and independents (who often source their books from supermarkets as they can get them cheaper than from the publisher), not the poor bleedin' author - and in the long run, not the reader, who is patronised and swindled, denied choice and range.

So, if Borders cannot be salvaged, this is a sad day, just as it was a sad day when Ottakars went, when Waterfields and Thornton's in Oxford went.

As writers, my dears, not only will we have to write the books, we'll need to self-publish them, market them, and find premises from which to sell them!

OK, now finally - there's still just time for you to sign up for my course on plot on Saturday! You'd be very welcome. See my post below for details or mosey on over to fictionfire!

Jaundiced Teacher Struggles to Hold Onto Ideals

Term has started. The last opportunity for candidates to be examined for the old-style A levels will be in January - otherwise it's the new form of A level all the way. Now, it may be that I'm just a crabbit old bag these days, but, God, I just can't find any joy in 'teaching to the test' and particularly this test. Time was, a couple of geological epochs ago, that I taught books. I taught students about pertinent themes, explored structure and language, and hopefully conveyed the joy I feel when analysing a beautiful piece of literature. It was not unknown for my students to discover they actually liked their books and that they'd been guided to an enriched appreciation of said books. I was always keen on explaining the historical and literary context for the books because this was part of the enriching process. But the bottom line always was the text itself, and exam questions often took the form of a passage for close analysis: 'Here is a scene from 'Antony and Cleopatra': how does the language used convey the relationship between the two main characters? How would the audience react to them at this point in the play? Support your answer with close reference to the text.' I've seen all sorts of changes over the years: texts allowed in exams, texts allowed to be annotated, coursework options allowed, modular repeated sittings of exams. We teachers take a deep breath, adjust, soldier on.

The latest changes, though, drive me to despair. This is not English as I perceive it, nor is it English as I would like to teach it. We're losing sight of the texts: they're swamped in a morass of politically correct contextual analysis, where the key word 'synoptic' rears its head over and over, where texts have to be related to one another to such a degree that we can no longer see them as individual pieces of art, where the notion of 'different interpretations' is so dominant, that students are bewildered. I have always known, for goodness sake, that there is no 'right' way to read a text, that we all bring our cultural and gender-based selves to a reading and this will affect how a text strikes us - but now the joy of analysing a line or enjoying a plot is submerged in jargon-heavy, abstract generalisations which are fundamentally as empty as city councils with their talk of 'beaconicity' and 'outreach programmes.'

I have become Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, I suppose.

Here is a sample question from an old-form A level paper, on Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale': 'How important do you think the relationship between Perdita and Florizel is to the play as a whole?' You may argue this is simplistic, but you know where you are with a question like this and even though the wording is simple it does not preclude the bright student from bringing the deeper issues and themes of the play into their argument. How about this on 'Measure for Measure': ''In spite of the fact that men govern Vienna, it is the women who have the real power.' To what extent do you agree with this view of 'Measure for Measure'?' This is a straightforward, argument-based question, with the key phrase 'To what extent' signalling to the candidate where they should go with their structure.

The new A level has cut the six module structure to four. Two of these modules are coursework units, the choice of texts for which is left to the teacher. The boards are offloading responsibility onto teachers in a big way. Teachers feel obligated to choose texts which will provide the easiest route to getting a good grade. This means that texts and areas of literature which may be more challenging are by-passed. The proportion of coursework to exam is too large. Shakespeare, on OCR, doesn't feature till the A2 year.

Here's a sample A2 essay question, focussing on three texts for one question, shackled together by the rule of 'one text post-1990, one text poetry': 'Writers present us with a clear sense of values. These values are drawn into particularly sharp focus when a chief concern of their writing is emotion.' Comment on and analyse the connections and comparisons between at least two texts you have studied in the light of this assertion. In your response you must ensure that at least one text is a post-1990 text, as indicated by * in the list above. In your response you should demonstrate what it means to be considering texts as a modern reader, in a modern context and that other readers at other times may well have had other responses.'

Say what?

Look at the length of the question! Look at the pomposity of it!

At AS, one sample coursework task, suggested the candidate write an pitch demonstrating how to re-tell King Henry IV for a 21st century audience. How about the 21st century audience making the effort to understand Henry IV within its own literary and cultural context? There are brilliant modern takes on Shakespeare and on Chaucer, we've endured modern twists on Jane Austen and Dr Jekyll: film and TV feast on the copyright-free past. Fine and good. But when it comes to exams, why should W. Shakespeare or G. Chaucer need to be subjected to an analysis which is more sociological than literary?

I really want to stress I'm not against contextual studies: it is important to know what the role of the church was in the fourteenth century, what the position of women was in Shakespeare's day, how Darwinism shook the foundations of Victorian complacency - this is all of interest and enhances reader understanding. But, for God's sake, exam boards, I'm begging you - cut the politically-correct obfuscating jargon, get the balance of text and context right, set questions which are clearly interpretable by an A level candidate, get back to basics, bring back the joy.

Rant over. For the moment

Summer School, Presumption of Guilt, and the Best Read this Year

My annual summer school week for the university's Department of Continuing Education finished last Friday, leaving me (and, I suspect, my students) pretty exhausted. It was a wonderful week, though, even though it was so full-on. I had a lovely class - fourteen people who were all motivated, cheerful, hard-working. If any of you are dropping by this blog, I wish you lots of luck with your writing: keep going, and let me know how you're getting on.

Last year, you may remember there was a huge debate about the issue of printing age ranges on children's books. I was very much of the view that you shouldn't. A campaign was waged by big-name children's writers and it looks as if most publishers backed off. Now we have another issue causing indignation: new legislation that requires that any author visiting a school will have to be registered on the Independent Safeguarding Authority database. Registration will cost £64, paid by the author, not the institution hiring them to visit.

Now, I've been looking at opinion on both sides: an author (Joe Craig?) on Breakfast News the other day said there were risks involved when authors visit schools, even if you wouldn't think so, given that the author is in a public environment and accompanied by adults. He said that kids often ask authors for the chance to communicate by email and so on - and that an author could get hold of these contact details and start grooming a child for abuse.

Nobody doubts that abuse does happen. There are evil people in this world, evil, screwed up, manipulative sad-sacks.

But my first point is, in agreement with writer Gillian Cross, that even when checks and systems are supposed to be in place, we have no idea how successful they are when preventing abuse. Time and again we are told that social workers and social work systems are being checked, yet horrendous cases of brutality towards tiny children still happen. No lessons seem to be learned; what we are told will never happen again always does.

Secondly, there is the assumption of guilt, of nefarious intention, of children as potential victims, of authors as potential abusers - all part of our siege-mentality culture. We bring up our children to fear and suspect others, and this is very very sad.

At the Winchester Conference last week, Michael Morpurgo, with his passion and idealism, demonstrated all that is good in the world of children's writers. He wants the best for children. He runs a farm in Devon where deprived children can breathe clean air, stroke the animals, learn to trust - sometimes, even, learn to speak. If he refuses to sign up to this legislation, are children in schools to be denied his wonderful enthusiasm and enthralling stories, each with a message (without being didactic or patronising) of love, imagination, seeing the best in other human beings?

One writer who is not signing up is Philip Pullman, angry that this legislation implies that 'no adult could possibly choose to spend time with children unless they wanted to abuse them.' He adds: 'I suppose, I shall never be allowed into a school again. I shall regret that very much, but I refuse to be complicit in any measure that assumes my guilt before I've done anything wrong.'

What's your view? When does protection become suffocation? When does legality become tyranny? It's all part of the debate about CCTV, ID cards, 'Elf and Safety. I'm reminded of the animated film 'Wall-e', where in the distant future the remnants of the human race are all on board a spacecraft like a cosmic cruise ship, where robots and computerised systems do absolutely everything for them: they're like plump babies whizzing about in reclining chairs, sucking nourishment up through straws, their limbs atrophied to weak little flippers.

Finally, for the next few weeks, oh joy, I'll be reading books entirely for my pleasure, not because I have to analyse them in class! Currently I'm reading the best book I've read all year - and I fully expect it to hold onto that position. It's Christopher Rush's 'To Travel Hopefully'. I discovered it in the travel section of Borders, yet it's not really a travel book. Or not only a travel book. Rush lost his wife to cancer; the first section is an utterly harrowing account of her illness and death, and his inability to come to terms with it. There's a terrible beauty in the language and a power and honesty in what he records that will break your heart. To heal himself, he decided, rather madly, to retrace the footsteps of his hero, Robert Louis Stevenson, travelling with a donkey through the Cevennes in France. That's the stage I've reached now - and the exquisite language, the range of literary references and meditative power of this book are still taking me by surprise at every page.

Normal service will be ...

... resumed soon, I hope. Students with coursework deadlines, elder son with AS levels, younger son sitting pseudo-SATS tests to stream him in classes for next year's GCSEs. Need I say more?

One other thing, though: boo to ITV for getting rid of the South Bank Show at the end of this season. What are they thinking of? It can be sycophantic and oily, precious and self-satisfied at times - but it's a national institution and it's a chance to see and hear some wonderful people, some wonderful works. For instance, an interview with William Goldman a couple of weeks ago.

Philistine Nation strikes again.

The Best Things Come to Those Who ...

A few weeks back I blogged about 'Queryfail' - where agents were sharing on Twitter the worst approaches made to them by writers. This has caused rage and frustration in the writing community: go to http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2009/04/agentfail-right-here.html to listen in to writers getting their own back by grousing about the dreadful behaviour of agents. I took a look at this last week and it was already a very lengthy thread and although I felt sympathy - and recognition - I also felt that it was a bit of a Pyrrhic victory to sneer at agents and complain about them. Sadly, many of the complaints were badly spelled and expressed - and this does the would-be clients of agents no favours. We need to stay calm, professional, icily articulate. Do go across and take a look: some of the experiences recounted are truly shocking. After a while, though, I bet you'll start feeling weary or uncomfortable - where does it get us all? I enjoy a good bleat as much as the next hard-done-by writer (oh, you noticed that, did you?) but there comes a time when you have to detach yourself and think of ways of taking practical, independent action. You have to have your pride, even if you don't have the cherished book-deal.

That said, I did recognise one of the cardinal sins of agents, and publishers, repeated over and over and over, and I have been at the receiving end of this so many times. What is it? Cruelty, a sneering dismissal, a promise unfulfilled, a stolen idea? No. It's SILENCE. It's the hardest thing of all to cope with. You put together the best submission package you can, you write a smooth, brief, ultra-professional letter, you dutifully follow all the guidelines on the agency's website, you act keen but not insanely desperate. You send material off by snail mail or through the ether. Then you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

You know you should be writing something new but you can't settle to it until ... until you know, once and for all, whether your beloved project has found a home.

You wait some more.

You agonise about when it would be permissible to make a brief, humble enquiry - did my material, perchance, reach you safely? When do you think you could let me know whether you're interested? You draft an email enquiry with more care than you put into the whole novel. You wait.

And you wait

And you wait.

Christmas comes. Another birthday. Your children grow six inches. So does your waistline. The photo you fondly thought might do as a publicity shot bears less and less resemblance to your current haggard state.

You keep waiting. Weeks, months - and sometimes years - down the line, an answer comes. When it does, it's a weasel-phrase, a wriggle-clause, written by an overloaded overworked agent (or minion) who, in spite of the fact that an entire geological epoch has passed since you submitted the thing, hasn't really had the time to read much of it, or read it with care. You suspect that these time-delay judgements are also, paradoxically, snap judgements. Not quite right for our list, bleh bleh. We wish you luck placing it elsewhere, blah blah. The knowing for sure, is cruel - but it certainly beats, believe me, the NOT knowing for sure. Tread on my dreams if you must - just don't skirt them and wander off without any comment at all on their pretty colours, their soft textures.

Several writers on the Bookends blog were particularly upset by failure of agents to reply even when material had been solicited! Another grouse is that agents put up on their websites that they will reply in four or six weeks - and then don't. Or they say that if you don't hear in a certain time, it's a no. Hmn. You'll still be left wondering - did it get to them safely? I must know, I must know! So you'll still chase them. Glitches do happen: when I revised my last book for my agent and waited several weeks for her response, then emailed her, I was told she hadn't received it. In fact it was at the agency, lying on somebody else's desk, for the best part of a month, further delaying the time when it would be sent out to publishers.

Now then, because God forbid we should sound biassed and unfair, let's take a look at an agent's perspective. Go to agent Nathan Bransford's excellent blog (in my blogroll to the right) - he's been conducting a very interesting experiment. He posted, with the writers' permissions, fifty genuine query letters he'd had and invited us to judge whether we would, as agents, have requested material from those writers. If you go to the blog, scroll right down to the beginning of this process: it's a lot of material and takes a while to read. I have to say I just read the queries rather than the hundreds of comments people were making on them, because I do actually have a life and it's really too short to follow up all of this. What is fascinating is that he buried in the midst of this three queries where the writers did go on to get publishing deals. He invites you to spot them. (This is why it's important to scroll right down to the start of the process and read upward, as it were). Well, I didn't. In fact, I can't remember any of the queries making my pulse go faster. Maybe I'd be a really mean agent! Try it for yourself: be an agent for a day. It'll fill up some of that waiting-time.

Tough Cookies of the World Unite

First of all, thank you thank you to the lovely Karen at http://writewritingwritten.blogspot.com/ for giving me my first blogging award, which I've proudly posted on the right! I'm chuffed on two counts: getting the award, which I hope also to pass on to some of my favourite bloggers, and learning how to get the dratted image onto my blog (teenage boy came in handy for that one!)

I'm sorry I didn't blog last week - pressure of work and a bit of a cold are my excuses, plus the startling revelation from my current agent that she's about to retire: all this knocked me for six and I didn't have the heart to write about bookish things. Those of you who are regular readers will have guessed that 2008 has been a bit of a sticky year for me. You may remember back in June 2007 I took up 'Hopeful Writer Stance'. Well, I'm still there, balanced on one leg, head slightly less in the clouds than before, trying not to wobble, trying to keep the fixed grin pinned to my face. Stomach like a washboard, my dear. (Not). Writing is a continual learning curve: you learn the techniques of the actual composition, you learn the discipline of editing, you do your best to take a professional approach and maximise your chances of publication. You write promotional copy, you think of all the angles, you are careful not ever to sound like a 'difficult author' in any communication with people in the publishing world. However, ultimately you are helpless. The worst aspect for me over the past two years is that I have had to wait. And wait. And wait. For cursory responses, for gushing regrets, for news that another series similar to mine was signed by that particular publisher only a week ago, for praise for my writing but condemnation of my genre. I've been told the central features of my book are no longer in fashion, that booksellers are tired of series (N.B. Booksellers - not readers. We know where the true power lies.) Then I've seen new series signed up, or books with fantasy elements like mine win prizes because the kids out there haven't yet been told those elements are passe. Then there are the publishers who can't be bothered to reply. A ghastly literary limbo that has lasted a full eighteen months.

So what now? Maybe I'll look back on this year as The Year of Taking Stock. Do I go on writing? If so, what do I write? Do I keep on believing in my children's book, a book which a couple of years ago gave me such incredible pleasure to write? Can I recapture that joy and enthusiasm or has it been bludgeoned out of me? If I write something else, what? Will I have to go through all this again - and again - and again? Or do I become mistress of my own fate and self-publish: ruin myself financially in all probability but at least not be at the mercy of Those Who Make Us Wait.

My agent's departure is a wake-up call. It's unnerving and scary to no longer be represented by an agency I've been with for years - but it also has potential. It will make me move on: I need to find someone who will nag me and reassure me and guide me in my dithering and energetically fight my corner. Wish me luck in the search.

This is for sure: we writers have to be tough cookies. Terriers. If you're writing too, hang on in there, won't you? Let's show them.

Le Rouge et le Non

The back cover of this week's edition of 'The Bookseller' is taken up by an advert for the Royal Mail. I was disconcerted to find, in the small print at the bottom of the page, the following:'Royal Mail, the Cruciform and the colour red are registered trade marks of Royal Mail Group Ltd.'

Mother, whip that red felt pen out of your child's chubby little fist. Teachers, find some other way of marking your displeasure on incompetent essays. Artists, step away from the Vermilion and the Crimson Lake. Santa, start thinking of a costume change. And Rudolph, about your nose ...

What penalties will we incur if we infringe the Royal Mail's rights over the sanguinary shade? Let's think. Post being delivered late? Frequent misdeliveries? Postmen who dump parcels in view of the street, without ringing your bell to check whether you're in? Much needed Post Offices closing right, left and centre?

On second thoughts, just keep using the bloody red.

AQA's Unkindest Cut

My elder son, as loyal readers will know, sat his GCSEs a few months ago (and yes, in spite of all the angst, he did well, especially in the subjects which he is now pursuing with great enjoyment at AS level). One of the subjects he dropped, alas, was English. I felt like Cnut trying to stop the tide. If you want your children to read, they say, surround them with books. I certainly did that. From babyhood I read to him. He saw me writing. He lives in a house wall-to-wall with books. He laughed at the jokes in the children's book I wrote. He loves a good story and he can memorise favourite lines with the greatest of ease. He just doesn't actually want to read - although having said that, he has just avidly read his way through the filmscript of The Shawshank Redemption, currently his favourite film. It's the only reading matter I've ever actually seen him 'lost' in, in the way that we traditionalists (reactionaries?) lose ourselves in novels. So that's a comfort.

All of this is by way of a preamble to the actual topic of this post. For his GCSE, he had to study a selection of poems from an anthology provided by the AQA exam board. It was a good selection, on the whole, veering very much towards the multi-cultural politically correct, as you'd expect. He enjoyed discussing some of the issues raised by the poems and was particularly struck by - and wrote about in the exam - a poem by Carol Ann Duffy called 'Education for Leisure' in which a directionless trainee psychopath, whose life is utterly empty, baldly states with an utter lack of potential empathy that 'Today I am going to kill something.' The chilling resume of the victims of idle violence - squashing a fly, wanting to torment a cat - are familiar motifs from the careers of serial killers who start with creatures lower on the great chain of being and work their way up to murdering fellow human beings. The style is stark and casual, every line a threat - although we are not shown an actual killing. Instead there is the ghastly imminence of the final line: 'The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.'

Given that a couple of days ago a young Finnish killer posted a video on YouTube showing him getting his hand in, and finishing with a close up on him saying something like 'You next', there is something so prophetic about Duffy's killer saying things like 'I could be anything at all' and 'today I am going to change the world'. It sums up all those hollow-hearted, empty-lived, morally-adrift adolescents who grab at fame by any means, fame for its own sake, fame however brief and shallow.

So, it's a poem with relevance, a poem that stimulates valuable discussion amongst a generation familiar with gun-crime, knife-crime, brutality of language, coarsening of attitudes, where strutting kids posture threats and vent aggression at the slightest - I almost said trigger. Technically, it's a good poem, morally a sound poem.

Ironic then, isn't it, that the AQA has issued a directive to teachers ordering them not to teach this poem anymore? Apparently they'd received a couple of complaints about its subject matter and took a yellow-bellied lily-livered abject course of action about it. This makes me so angry. They've completely missed the point, interpreting it as a glamorisation of violence when that's the very thing it's not! How absurd, also, to think that sixteen year olds can't handle the poem - the very sixteen year olds who have access to extreme violence and sexual content on the social networking sites, who watch films like 'Hostel' and 'Saw' in the delightfully named 'torture porn' genre, and who even on terrestrial TV are inured to scenes in dramas where violence of action and language is the norm. Aren't these the very kids who NEED to read Duffy's poem?

A double irony, too, that this year's Guardian Children's Fiction prize has gone to Patrick Ness's 'The Knife of Letting Go', and the list also included Anthony McGowan's 'The Knife That Killed Me'. These are books which apparently explore the pressures on kids and the effects and consequences of wielding a knife.

God knows, I'd love it if children's fiction - and children's lives - could float on a warm bath of Swallows and Amazons and Five Go to Kirrin Island adventures - but that's not how it is these days for so many of those pesky kids, so stories and poems that help them to make sense of challenging issues, non gratuitiously, are to be welcomed.

Shame on you, AQA, shame on you.

Age-ranging rage

One of the current topics of debate in the world of children's books is whether publishers should print intended age-groups on the covers. There was a fairly heated spat on this morning's BBC Breakfast programme between authors Meg Rosoff (in favour) and Graham Marks (against). In my copy of The Bookseller this week there is a full page statement by famous children's authors putting the case against and asking us to support them.

So what are the arguments? Publishers (and not all have signed up for this, by the way: Walker and Bloomsbury, I believe, are reluctant) argue that people who are buying books for the children in their lives need guidance, otherwise they just don't know what would be appropriate for little Melanie or Johnny.

I have a suggestion here - how about they look at the jacket design or try opening the covers and reading a few pages? If they are in the habit of having any contact with the children they're purchasing for, they must have some idea of their interests and vocabulary level.

Meg Rosoff argued that people are genuinely bewildered. Graham Marks, showing signs of being seriously exercised by this, pointed out that in bookshops there is already age-ranging going on: 8-12, 12+ and so on. Meg countered that in supermarkets this is not the case, and that it's really hard, apparently, to find a bookseller who can give you that kind of information and guidance.

Oh please.

You may have twigged by now which side I take on this debate. I think the idea is hideous. Once of the strongest arguments against it is that kids will judge other kids and sneer at them if they see them reading something marked beneath their chronological age. God knows, it's hard enough to get kids to read in the first place, let's not age-ghettoise them.

When I was a child, my criterion for reading a book was this: 'Is it a good story?' Never mind age-appropriateness. I hated those books that had been bowdlerised and watered down to suit a nominal age group: 'Kidnapped' with a simpler vocabulary, and so on. I liked to be tested. I often didn't understand words and concepts (I used to wonder why so many 'divers' appeared in old books, for instance) - but that didn't matter. Reading those words in the context of a story that gripped me led me towards an understanding of them, simply because of that context, that setting - and helped me to develop my own powers of expression.

Neither publishers nor bookshops seem to have a clear sense of age-banding anyway: younger reading can stop at 7. Or 8. The middle ground goes from 8-11. Or 9-12, depending on the bookstore. Older readers are 12+. Or they have to be teens. At some point they segue into young adults. When are you a young adult? 14? 15? 16?

To fix these ages on the backs of books, as opposed to shelf-edges or display stands is the worst of options as this is a signal not left behind after purchase. Every time the child opens the book they're making a declaration to the world, to their peers: 'This book is, like Goldilocks' porridge, just right for me. At least, so the publisher is telling me - even though I'm bored stupid'. Or 'This book shows the world I'm punching above my weight. I'm a clever-clogs. Actually, though, I don't understand the half of it.' Or 'This book confirms what you all thought: I'm a thicko and I can only cope with something written for littlies - I'm so embarrassed. But I really like the story.'

Stop patronising kids - start stretching them. Let them find their own level. Encourage them to read everything, from the old picture books that bring back the feeling of being cherished and safe, to the bewildering complexity of a story that gives them challenge and satisfaction.

If you feel as I do, take yourself off to www.notoagebanding.org and sign the petition.

GCSE hell

A brief message: simply this - elder son, GCSEs. I think I need say little more except apologies for not posting much this week. Abnormal service is likely to continue for the next few weeks. Those of you who have been through this with your offspring will understand only too well, I'm sure.

What I do know is that sixteen year old boys find it very hard to fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run. And those unforgiving minutes are ticking away at a horrendous rate, and what was distant and abstract is becoming all too real. Ostrich behaviour kicks in.

I honestly can't recall how hard I worked for my O levels, way way back when. I was motivated, I know, by ambition and by pride. I'd been trained to see second best as nowhere. But I know also I did a fair amount of winging it - and was the sort of student able to bluff my way through if necessary. I was always at my best during the short sharp pressure of an exam. However, those were the days before the Era of the Visual, where knowledge comes in brief flurries of busy images, where teachers teach from extracts and photocopied sheets, so that students have no sense of the Gestalt of a book, cannot cope with long chunks of text, cannot extract information from such text, where to read a book logically from beginning to end, to - quite simply - stay with a task through the long haul, seems increasingly alien. An era where the dreaded Assessment Objectives, in all their windy glory, rule how an examiner marks and how a teacher teaches. I am currently marking A level coursework and have to fill in a grid on the cover sheet to prove that AOs 1, 3, 4 and 5ii have been covered. Stultifying, stultifying, stultifying. If the candidate says 'Shakespeare presents Othello as ...' that ticks the AO4 box, which has to do with different interpretations of the text - and that is how I have to advise my students to express themselves, rather than 'Othello is ...'

Now, boys and girls, this started as a brief post. But up galloped that old high horse and I jest couldn't resist getting into the saddle, yet again. Yee haw.

Blogperils

In the early days of this blog I put up a link in the box to 'Miss Snark', an acerbic anonymous New York literary agent: I found her blog witty, cutting, refreshing and informative. Shortly afterwards, she stopped posting because, quite simply, the blog was taking over her life and she'd had enough. Recently, I linked to the writer Tess Gerritsen's blog - also witty, honest, vulnerable and informative. A few days ago she decided to stop posting - is this the curse of Literascribe? No, it's because a certain camp of readers took exception to a recent post of hers because they totally failed to perceive its ironic tone. She was subject to such abuse that she decided it wasn't worth going on with the blog in the face of such criticism, misunderstanding and hostility. Can't say I blame her, having read some of the acid comments sent her way.

Both blogs are still up, so you can look at the archive. I recommend both of them - Tess gives us an insight into the self-doubts that beset even a successful professional writer. Miss Snark pulls no punches when it comes to shattering the illusions of self-deceiving aspirant writers. Both give us insight into how publishing works. Often the revelations are not at all comfortable - but if you're going to go into the lion's den yourself, it's best to know the beasties have claws and teeth and hunt in packs.

Out of all this we can see the perils of blogging - first, its addictive quality. I cannot ever see myself being one of those people who writes a daily blog. I don't want it to rule my life like that. The second problem, Tess's problem, is more worrying. Most people who read blogs are 'lurkers' - they read, ponder, are appreciative but don't communicate. Of those who do respond, the majority are positive and supportive, making an interesting contribution to discussion. But then there are the Others - and here I may be risking my own blog-existence - who, I have to say, hide in a cowardly manner behind anonymity, who are encouraged by the nature of online communication to unleash hostility, judgementalism, and vituperation, and who in all probability would never dare speak to their victim in such a way if they were actually face to face.

So, my sympathy to Tess. And thank you, Literascribees, for being (so far!) nothing but supportive!

Advances in Retreat

'Writing, the No-money Game' - now there's a title you can't resist: this is the area debated in Jean Hannah Edelstein's Guardian blog - http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/04/_those_inclined_to-suspect.html
What has given rise to it is a proposal by an imprint of HarperCollins to dispense with writers' advances and instead give them a bigger cut of the royalties. On the face of it, I'm in favour of that. The reading public often has no idea at all how small the writer's cut is. When I signed copies of the £17 hardback of The Chase when it came out, many were the signees who seemed to think I was earning all or most of that £17. Hah! At most, £1.70, my dear - and don't even mention paperbacks to me - pennies, my love, mere pennies. Then again, my advance - like most advances - was pretty small. So I would welcome more than 5% or 7.5% of the price of my book as reward for my labours - but is it a good idea to get rid of advances? There are two major problems with this: the first is how long it takes to write a book. The Chase took me six years. At least with an advance, you at last get some sort of reward, divided into instalments at the signing of the contract, at the delivery of the final manuscript, and on publication. With no advance you would have to wait another year for the book to actually hit the bookstalls, then for the income from it to filter through the Byzantine and slothful accounting systems of your publisher. Secondly, most writers are aware that the amount of marketing effort your publisher puts into your book is commensurate with the amount of the advance paid. If it's a large advance, the publisher will make more of an effort to recoup that investment. So, all in all, I do think advances should stay and royalties should increase!

The Guardian blog has, as ever, given rise to debate by the old faithfuls who love to comment on it - the debate is interesting, often eccentric and self-indulgent, and at times acrimonious. It veers off the point of advances etc to return to that hoary old chestnut: that somehow writers, being such noble souls, should write for the love of it - not for dosh, not to satisfy ego etc. Do take a look and see what you think. When I'm teaching creative writing I always ask my students to examine their motivation as honestly as possible. And yes, we writers do have ideals, and many of us could not conceive of giving up writing even though we never gain any reward or recognition for it, and many of us look askance or with a snobbish superiority at those who turn into cash cows for their publishers. My own feeling (and my feelings are complex at present, as I am engaged in a personal struggle with my own writing and motivation) - is that it's perfectly OK to want to earn money from your talent. And why not a lot of money? The problem just now is more to do with the limitations of the celebrity-driven commercial world of publishing, which seems to be in a state of feverish pursuit of ... what? The sure-fire, the done-before, the lowest-common-denominator insult to the reading public which assumes they have no spirit of adventure and must not have their horizons broadened, by a process that demands books be written on the ever-more-speedy production line, by an artistic environment -as in films and music - where the artist, the actual creator of content and 'product' is devalued and exploited.

Whew! I leave you with a quote from Jane Holland in the debate after the blog - she has several comments there, including a scary resume of just how much money she (did't) make from one genre novel - '...there seems to be an absurd assumption hereabouts that writers should write for sheer pleasure and artistic integrity, and that if they're lucky enough to be published, to accept that as the pinnacle of their achievement. Any unholy desire for filthy lucre - i.e. a few quid for a poem, and if you're really lucky, a couple of grand for a first novel that probably took you several years to write - is to be rejected as a soiling of the artistic dream.'

Artistic integrity? Filthy lucre? As Harry Hill would say: 'There's only one way to find out! Fight!'

Quo Vadis?

I know I've not been posting as much as I'd like and I daresay the tone recently could be lighter - I hope next week to return to normal service. Suffice to say that I came back last night from a brief visit to Scotland to attend my aunt's funeral. I actually feel worse today than I did during the visit, because the trip had involved serious logistical problems, so my mind was kept occupied. Plus the weather was so cold I could scarcely feel my heart: it was frozen along with my fingers, toes, spine and mind. There's a cemetery up there where I've stood and shivered altogether too many times, where spiritual platitudes are uttered to the faithful for whom they are a comfort - but all I feel is that if I have such a thing as a soul, it's gone into shutdown and it can't be reached.

My aunt was, as the minister said, 'a woman of faith', so I hope she is now where her faith told her she would be and that she is with those she loved and lost and who were also of faith.

I think that's a pasture I won't be allowed to graze.

There's every chance tomorrow that I will remove this self-indulgent post. Bear with me in the meantime.

Plead for PLR Justice

Yes, I skipped a week again - this time it was because of half-term. How people maintain daily blogs is beyond me - and often they're the ones who list the minutiae of their lives in excruciating detail. I promise, my people, never to tell you what kind of toothpaste I use or keep you informed of daily wordcounts or problems with that scene in Chapter 3 where Freddy is having an identity crisis ...

I do, however, have a backlog (as opposed to weblog) of matters of interest and idle notions - how I'm ever going to catch up I don't know. Thing is, access to computer so often fails to coincide with thoughts springing up in brain. Amazing how fluent and inspired I am in the shower or the bus queue or while an Eng Lit student of mine is trying to come up with a reason for the image of an oak tree in stanza 2 line 6.

Today I just want to ask for your help. As you are probably all too aware (especially if you are a writer yourself), most writers earn sod all from their work - and if, as is predicted, the era of the e-book really does dawn and publishing suffers what happened to the music industry, it may well be that with digital rip-off going on, we earn even less. All the more reason, therefore, to protect what we've got, which includes PLR - the fee paid to writers every time a book they wrote goes out on loan from a library. Our Olympics-focussed government proposes not only to freeze the payment (a few pence per loan) but actually reduce it: and it will take 3 years to bring it back up to current levels. For writers, as for Tesco customers, every little helps. So, will you please sign a petition to the government protesting about this? Please go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/plr-funding/ and add your name.

By the way, if anyone computer-savvy is reading this, can you let me know how to type a URL like that one and have it come up as a link, underlined? This blog used to do that and now doesn't and I don't know why. Thanks.

Taxing resources and testing times, Mr Hart-Davis

Yes, I know, I know I didn't blog last week:

(a) Elder son with Science GCSEs and deep-seated aversion to revision. Those of you in the same boat will know exactly what sort of conversations were held and in what tone, and will understand the massive levels of will and determination needed to counteract adolescent inertia.

(b) Trying to book a holiday property in France: yet another instance of how the internet, wonderful resource that it is, is a total black hole swallowing up hours of fruitless clicking from site to site. Overwhelmed with information and possibilities, you end up worried that if you don't click onto that site, that link, you might be missing something better than what you've just found. There's always something better just a click away ... and you look up and find six hours of your life have passed, your neck is irredeemably cricked and you've lost the use of your legs. Two solid weekends I've spent at this and we have found something - but yes, I am worried that there was something better, some perfect beachside blue-shuttered property with cool airy rooms, a superfluity of bathrooms and the ideal pool, with gorgeous views of the Med, with seclusion and calm, yet only two minutes from shops and restaurants, a retreat, a hideaway, yet convenient for the airport ... Holidays are like romantic love: a search for a composite of Willoughby and Colonel Brandon.

(c) Tax. End of January approaching. Need I say more. And note to Mr Adam Hart-Davis: you're a lovely man and I so enjoyed you scurrying about demonstrating what previous generations did for us, and no one can explain a Roman land-surveying system better than you, but you're wrong, Mr Hart-Davis, so wrong, as you trot across the sands of time in that hugely irritating Inland Revenue advert/harassment. Tax does, by its nature, have to be taxing. Bloody taxing.

You may never hear from me again. Remember me kindly.

Councils, Balls and Humbug

Apparently the National Year of Reading was launched by the government this week. Three cheers, eh? Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said literacy is 'one of the best anti-poverty, deprivation and crime policies we can think of' and called for every employer, school, library, college and local authority to be involved. This is pretty rich: I refer you once more to Susan Hill's blog about libraries on Jan 2 (see links to the right).

Meanwhile, the British Council is going to disband its film, visual arts, drama, dance, design and literature departments, which serve to promote British culture worldwide and increase dialogue and cross-fertilisation, surely important in this global village of ours, and is now telling staff to focus on 'Progressive Facilitation', 'Market Intelligence Network', 'Knowledge Transfer Function' and so on. And no, I didn't make up any of that empty jargon.

To put the tin lid on it all, the Arts Council is reducing or removing grants to many worthwhile projects, including small independent publishers such as Anvil Press, Dedalus and Arcadia. Even so well-established a poetry imprint as Bloodaxe is, in the words of MD Neil Astley, 'scared stiff; you can't plan.' At least Tindall Street Press are OK - just as well, given that their first time author Catherine O'Flynn, won the Costa First Novel Prize with 'What Was Lost' (and it was also longlisted for the Booker). And why is the Arts Council being so mean with organisations for whom a few thousand pounds either way mean the difference between survival and going to the wall? It's because all those grants can go off to something so much more worthwhile. The Olympics. Yup. That cash-starved behemoth out in Docklands. Dontcha just wish we hadn't won that gig?