Here's a quote: 'I never thought of the public at all and publication has never been my principal objective anyway. ... You can't be in it for the money, you can't be in it for the idea you're going to be famous.' Joanne Harris
How you react to the above words should tell you a lot about your nature and motivation as a writer. Why are you doing this? (Your loved ones and best friends may well ask you the same question, with plaintive expressions on their faces). It's a question to trouble the wee small hours, a question to haunt you when you've had another rejection or one of those said loved ones has just cast an eye over your immortal prose with a look of incomprehension on his or her face. 'Very nice, dear,' they may say. Not much of a crumb to snatch at.
At one end of the scale is the image of the writer as the misunderstood genius, the tortured loner, whose profound words and individual voice will only be understood by posterity. At the other end is the cynical hack rolling out what the public wants - and the public gets, as long as the advances are high, the step-deals satisfactory, the ego well massaged.
I for one have always wanted, needed to write. It's a sickness in the blood. But I've always wanted to be read too. The private stuff is for my diary (and even that, one has to say, is written, in a way, for an invisible audience - my future self, who will come across it years down the line and cringe with embarrassment at what I say now, but also smile fondly and nostalgically - or gasp with recognition at a memory that had been buried until reading my own words exhumed it).
I've always wanted to be published and one of the greatest thrills of my life was, on publication day, to see the window of Bloomsbury's offices in Soho filled with copies of The Chase. My book. My book. To go into bookshops and see it there. My book.
Along with that, there's the desire to earn money. It's an honest desire. Many writers dream of the literary income that will free them from everything else. Money isn't yachts and diamonds. Money is time. Time is freedom. Freedom equates to creativity.
When I started teaching creative writing I automatically believed that would-be writers would welcome advice not only on writing but on editing their manuscripts and submitting them. I felt it was important to give my students a clear idea of how the world of publishing worked - even if this meant shattering a few illusions. Writers need to know the commercial realities - and with every passing year this is more and more true. Back then, I often encountered a kind of sniffiness about what I was doing, as if it was somehow infra dig to take the commercial approach, to avoid the kind of preciousness that dismisses the need to be published as if it's the route to selling your literary soul.
How ironic then, to find that increasingly, as creative writing courses flourish up and down the land, that many of them now focus strongly on the editing and submission aspects. Vindicated!
Here's another quote: 'All bestsellers are honest books written according to a writer's obsession.' Robert Harris
Find yours. Write about it. Sell it. Sell it to readers. Make contact.
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Friday, 1 June 2007
Snark is Dark
Whaddya know - I link to two blogs and one, Jacqui Lofthouse's is temporarily dark, with good reason because Jacqui is working to finish her new novel to a deadline: good luck with that, Jacqui. Her site is still well worth a look, of course. The other blog, featuring the wonderfully acerbic New York wit of Miss Snark, literary agent, is now permanently dark. As Miss S would say, Dear dog in heaven. It looks she was a victim of her own success and the blog was taking over her life. However, I will maintain the link because it's still a blog worth visiting, with a huge archive and links to other blogging agents. (Sounds like an insult - 'You dirty blogging agent you!') So, do pay a visit and scroll down from the cutesy farewell picture of her dog, Killer Yapp: you'll find lots of vicious fun and information.
Read it before you see it
Computer grief goes on - I can log on to this blog from an Apple Mac but not from my laptop, which is very galling as it's more convenient for me. Initially, everything was fine - then a couple of weeks ago the laptop refused to let me past, flagging up a privacy report. When I try to circumvent the problem by asking it to 'allow' my log in, I just go round and round the houses and nothing happens - it's still listed as restricted. Aarggh! `If anyone has any advice, I'd welcome it.
In the news this week: first, you remember that I drew attention to the horrors (in my opinion, my ever-so-'umble opinion Mr Copperfield) of the Dickens theme park in Chatham. Now I read in The Times (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1862681.ece) about the Harry Potter park to be built by Warner Brothers and Universal studios in Orlando (where else?) 'The film-makers believe that they can recreate the dream of every child reader, and probably a few million adults too, who have imagined themselves flying in a game of Quidditch or walking into Hogwarts School ...' Do you lie awake at night, wishing you were astride a Nimbus 2000?
We are promised 'fully immersive' experiences to recreate the magic of Rowling's imagination with illusions like computerised figures that appear and disappear - and the vice-president of Unversal Creative Studios is quoted as saying 'This will allow people to have an experience unlike one they have been able to imagine before. What we're creating is an entire world. A place where magic happens.' Forgive me, but I thought that had already been achieved, by means of the relatively inexpensive mode of the er, actual, books.
I am at present reading Philip Pullman's 'Northern Lights' to my boys because I want them to know the story before the film (annoyingly called 'The Golden Compass') comes out and sets their visions in stone. It's too late with regard to 'The Lord of the Rings' - if they ever get round to reading it, the landscape and characters have been pre-envisioned for them. Although I think Peter Jackson did a damn fine job, it's sad to think that millions of viewers are missing out on what, for me, is one of the marvellous aspects of writing - that the writer presents powerful images which the reader then responds to in their own individual way. My children are part of a generation where it's all done for them: scene, gesture, background music. I think Viggo Mortenson is a brilliant Aragorn - but before he came along I had a vision of Aragorn myself and the two co-exist in my brain, like hearing two different piano players interpret a famous sonata. It's interesting that the publishers of the Narnia stories used the line 'Read it before you see it' before the film of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' came out.
Maybe I'm wrong: Barry Meyer, chairman of Warner Bros, claims 'Over the years, we have received thousands of letters from fans wishing they could visit Hogwarts and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories.' But for me, all that's needed is an armchair, no interruptions, a glorious book to lose myself in and an active and responsive imagination - my reaction to the words on the page is the interactivity that satisfies me. I don't need some jobbing actor dressed up as Fagin or a wander through 'snow-covered Hogsmeade village'.
Then again, if I do publiish my children's book and anyone wants to come along and buy the film rights ...!
In the news this week: first, you remember that I drew attention to the horrors (in my opinion, my ever-so-'umble opinion Mr Copperfield) of the Dickens theme park in Chatham. Now I read in The Times (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1862681.ece) about the Harry Potter park to be built by Warner Brothers and Universal studios in Orlando (where else?) 'The film-makers believe that they can recreate the dream of every child reader, and probably a few million adults too, who have imagined themselves flying in a game of Quidditch or walking into Hogwarts School ...' Do you lie awake at night, wishing you were astride a Nimbus 2000?
We are promised 'fully immersive' experiences to recreate the magic of Rowling's imagination with illusions like computerised figures that appear and disappear - and the vice-president of Unversal Creative Studios is quoted as saying 'This will allow people to have an experience unlike one they have been able to imagine before. What we're creating is an entire world. A place where magic happens.' Forgive me, but I thought that had already been achieved, by means of the relatively inexpensive mode of the er, actual, books.
I am at present reading Philip Pullman's 'Northern Lights' to my boys because I want them to know the story before the film (annoyingly called 'The Golden Compass') comes out and sets their visions in stone. It's too late with regard to 'The Lord of the Rings' - if they ever get round to reading it, the landscape and characters have been pre-envisioned for them. Although I think Peter Jackson did a damn fine job, it's sad to think that millions of viewers are missing out on what, for me, is one of the marvellous aspects of writing - that the writer presents powerful images which the reader then responds to in their own individual way. My children are part of a generation where it's all done for them: scene, gesture, background music. I think Viggo Mortenson is a brilliant Aragorn - but before he came along I had a vision of Aragorn myself and the two co-exist in my brain, like hearing two different piano players interpret a famous sonata. It's interesting that the publishers of the Narnia stories used the line 'Read it before you see it' before the film of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' came out.
Maybe I'm wrong: Barry Meyer, chairman of Warner Bros, claims 'Over the years, we have received thousands of letters from fans wishing they could visit Hogwarts and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories.' But for me, all that's needed is an armchair, no interruptions, a glorious book to lose myself in and an active and responsive imagination - my reaction to the words on the page is the interactivity that satisfies me. I don't need some jobbing actor dressed up as Fagin or a wander through 'snow-covered Hogsmeade village'.
Then again, if I do publiish my children's book and anyone wants to come along and buy the film rights ...!
Friday, 25 May 2007
Wanna bet?
Well, here's a thing - take a look at www.MediaPredict.com - it's a new 'virtual market' where you can take a punt on whether book proposals posted on the site will find a book deal. Traders can buy shares based on guessing whether a book deal will materialise - but remember, the valued of shares can go up as well as down. When trading closes in September, five proposals will be chosen and one or more will be offered a book deal by Simon and Schuster (currently embroiled in a furore with the Authors Guild in America because it's claimed they want to have contracts with writers which will retain rights over works even when said works are, to all intents and purposes out of print - a juncture where an author might well want to retrieve their rights and move on.)
Not only can you bet on these proposals, you can submit your own work (agents can do this too, and are) - there's a page of guidelines for doing so. Presenting your work as a proposal, within a tight wordcount, is a useful discipline anyway, and worth practising. Remember, the time will come when you will have to be able to summarise your work pithily, with a clear focus on what the 'heart' or'point' of the story is. You can't just drivel on for page after page, blow by agonising blow through the plot.
Of course Touchstone/Simon and Schuster aren't just in it as an act of charity - it's an experiment to see how well the public can predict what will and what will not work - the philisophers' stone of marketing. Mark Gompertz, publisher of Touchstone Books is quoted in the New York Times: 'Since Gutenberg first printed the Bible, critics have always said publishers don't know what they're doing. Just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks is a crazy way to do business."
Imagine a focus group gathering to discuss the potential of Gutenberg's bible, or, indeed, Malory's Morte d'Arthur ... 'Yeah, Tom, it's like exciting, what with knights and ladies and all, but although you've produced an interesting synthesis of those fancy French legends (and the ladies will like the lurve aspect) and macho trad Anglo-Saxon schtick, I think there's a real danger, you know, that it isn't like, focussed enough? I mean, who's the hero? Is it Arthur, or Tristram, or Gawain or Arthur?And what's with all the religion? What's with Guinevere going into that nunnery at Amesbury? Won't the readers find that a downer? She's a feisty broad - coudn't she and Lance just set the kingdom up again? Round Table 2: Return to Joyous Gard? Round Table 3: Search for the Lost King? Round Table 4: Farewell to Avalon? The only thing investors like more than a sequel is lots of sequels ...'
Finally, remember my fellow wannabees and literafiends, the wise words of William Goldman, when talking about the unpredictability of Hollywood success: 'NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING - Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. '
The same goes for books. Time and again, when I'm writing, I think 'Will this sell?' But I can't tell - all I can do is write the story I have to write, the story that nags in my head all the time, the story that's a terrier, that won't let go. And so should you. Then throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.
Not only can you bet on these proposals, you can submit your own work (agents can do this too, and are) - there's a page of guidelines for doing so. Presenting your work as a proposal, within a tight wordcount, is a useful discipline anyway, and worth practising. Remember, the time will come when you will have to be able to summarise your work pithily, with a clear focus on what the 'heart' or'point' of the story is. You can't just drivel on for page after page, blow by agonising blow through the plot.
Of course Touchstone/Simon and Schuster aren't just in it as an act of charity - it's an experiment to see how well the public can predict what will and what will not work - the philisophers' stone of marketing. Mark Gompertz, publisher of Touchstone Books is quoted in the New York Times: 'Since Gutenberg first printed the Bible, critics have always said publishers don't know what they're doing. Just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks is a crazy way to do business."
Imagine a focus group gathering to discuss the potential of Gutenberg's bible, or, indeed, Malory's Morte d'Arthur ... 'Yeah, Tom, it's like exciting, what with knights and ladies and all, but although you've produced an interesting synthesis of those fancy French legends (and the ladies will like the lurve aspect) and macho trad Anglo-Saxon schtick, I think there's a real danger, you know, that it isn't like, focussed enough? I mean, who's the hero? Is it Arthur, or Tristram, or Gawain or Arthur?And what's with all the religion? What's with Guinevere going into that nunnery at Amesbury? Won't the readers find that a downer? She's a feisty broad - coudn't she and Lance just set the kingdom up again? Round Table 2: Return to Joyous Gard? Round Table 3: Search for the Lost King? Round Table 4: Farewell to Avalon? The only thing investors like more than a sequel is lots of sequels ...'
Finally, remember my fellow wannabees and literafiends, the wise words of William Goldman, when talking about the unpredictability of Hollywood success: 'NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING - Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. '
The same goes for books. Time and again, when I'm writing, I think 'Will this sell?' But I can't tell - all I can do is write the story I have to write, the story that nags in my head all the time, the story that's a terrier, that won't let go. And so should you. Then throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Pop go the festivals
I'm back - I have a backlog of things I want to discuss but am still pushed for time because of the manifold claims on my attention!
In the meantime, check out an article in the Independent about the boom in literary festivals - you may remember me discussing this in an earlier post. With the Hay on Wye festival imminent (130,000 attended last year), this is a timely examination of the 'more than 100 jamborees for the prose and poetry-obsessed every year.' It refers to a music promoter who's 'thinking of getting into book events. You don't realise how many people there are out there who want to spend a weekend in a tent, or maybe just an afternoon, chowing down about the latest hot writer or wanting to be in the same room as Simon Schama or Lauren Child'. Well, my fellow literafiends, how hip are we? Whose books are you chowing down at present?
Liam Browne, who's involved with the Brighton and Dublin festivals, says: 'Publishers will now often require an author to make a certain number of appearances ... There is more pressure than ever on writers to perform.' Was it Monty Python who long ago had a sketch where a famous writer (Hardy?) sat at a desk in public and started to write, with a spoof sportstyle commentary going on ('And he's picked up the pen ... and he's written his first word ... and it's 'The' .. No, no, he's crossed it out, groans from the waiting crowd ...') Or was it Not the Nine O'Clock News that did the sketch? Some kind soul will enlighten me.
I digress. Liam Browne also says audiences are no longer passive: 'these events are much more interactive than they used to be.' Sounds scary. By the way I can recommend a book edited by Robin Robertson called 'Mortification' (Harper Perennial 2004), which is an anthology of the humiliations writers have gone through at signings, interviews, on book tours in darkest middle America and the like. A nice helping of schadenfreude there!
The festivals article is at http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/news/article2565133.ece
'Scuse me now while I go off and nag my son (in a loving manner of course) some more (he has four more exams this week, a music performance and a coursework draft ...)
In the meantime, check out an article in the Independent about the boom in literary festivals - you may remember me discussing this in an earlier post. With the Hay on Wye festival imminent (130,000 attended last year), this is a timely examination of the 'more than 100 jamborees for the prose and poetry-obsessed every year.' It refers to a music promoter who's 'thinking of getting into book events. You don't realise how many people there are out there who want to spend a weekend in a tent, or maybe just an afternoon, chowing down about the latest hot writer or wanting to be in the same room as Simon Schama or Lauren Child'. Well, my fellow literafiends, how hip are we? Whose books are you chowing down at present?
Liam Browne, who's involved with the Brighton and Dublin festivals, says: 'Publishers will now often require an author to make a certain number of appearances ... There is more pressure than ever on writers to perform.' Was it Monty Python who long ago had a sketch where a famous writer (Hardy?) sat at a desk in public and started to write, with a spoof sportstyle commentary going on ('And he's picked up the pen ... and he's written his first word ... and it's 'The' .. No, no, he's crossed it out, groans from the waiting crowd ...') Or was it Not the Nine O'Clock News that did the sketch? Some kind soul will enlighten me.
I digress. Liam Browne also says audiences are no longer passive: 'these events are much more interactive than they used to be.' Sounds scary. By the way I can recommend a book edited by Robin Robertson called 'Mortification' (Harper Perennial 2004), which is an anthology of the humiliations writers have gone through at signings, interviews, on book tours in darkest middle America and the like. A nice helping of schadenfreude there!
The festivals article is at http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/news/article2565133.ece
'Scuse me now while I go off and nag my son (in a loving manner of course) some more (he has four more exams this week, a music performance and a coursework draft ...)
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Say no more?
My students' AS and A Levels - imminent.
My elder son's year 10 exams - current.
I think you'll understand why I'm not blogging frequently just now ...
My elder son's year 10 exams - current.
I think you'll understand why I'm not blogging frequently just now ...
Friday, 11 May 2007
Daemons and debates
Again, I've been silent for a few days because of computer woes. Honestly, you just feel that working with a computer is like falling serially in love with men who say all the right things but then don't call you - it's the triumph of hope over adversity (the computer-daemon lurking under my keyboard as I type these words is listening and will probably throw a mega-wobbly in revenge now, so if you don't hear from me for weeks, you'll know why.)
I'm glad to see that another glitch, this time with this blog, has sorted itself out: my Quotes of Note section, which was supposed to lie along the bottom of the page, had mysteriously repositioned it down the side, and the quote looked like pretentious avant-garde free verse - but now it's gone back to where it belongs. However, I don't think it's working too well presentationally and will set up quotes as a label and try to post more soon - I've got loads of the things to share with you!
And no, you don't need to slap my wrist - I haven't hassled my agent in any way, shape or form (one week and counting ...)
Thanks to Si Spurrier for getting in touch about my last post - do have a look at what he says.
Two items to share: first, an article in the Times on the 9th about women in publishing. The gender debate to do with writing and publishing goes on. Cf the Orange prize and whether there should be prizes for women only, the amount of review coverage given by men to books written by men etc etc. The article tells us that last year men bought 128million books (how do they know this?) and women 188 million - and I bet the ones bought by women covered a far greater range of genres too. Look at your family and friends, local books groups and so on - what is the proportion of male to female readers/buyers?
The article is at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts-and-entertainment/books/article1747200.ece
and has a very good comment by Danuta Kean, who writes about the book trade.
Further to my last post and the debate about putting RRPs on books, see http://www.publishingnews.co.uk/pn/pno-news-display.asp?k=e2007051011100676&sg9t=5dd48cfc5428ed8612314deaa691e318
I'm glad to see that another glitch, this time with this blog, has sorted itself out: my Quotes of Note section, which was supposed to lie along the bottom of the page, had mysteriously repositioned it down the side, and the quote looked like pretentious avant-garde free verse - but now it's gone back to where it belongs. However, I don't think it's working too well presentationally and will set up quotes as a label and try to post more soon - I've got loads of the things to share with you!
And no, you don't need to slap my wrist - I haven't hassled my agent in any way, shape or form (one week and counting ...)
Thanks to Si Spurrier for getting in touch about my last post - do have a look at what he says.
Two items to share: first, an article in the Times on the 9th about women in publishing. The gender debate to do with writing and publishing goes on. Cf the Orange prize and whether there should be prizes for women only, the amount of review coverage given by men to books written by men etc etc. The article tells us that last year men bought 128million books (how do they know this?) and women 188 million - and I bet the ones bought by women covered a far greater range of genres too. Look at your family and friends, local books groups and so on - what is the proportion of male to female readers/buyers?
The article is at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts-and-entertainment/books/article1747200.ece
and has a very good comment by Danuta Kean, who writes about the book trade.
Further to my last post and the debate about putting RRPs on books, see http://www.publishingnews.co.uk/pn/pno-news-display.asp?k=e2007051011100676&sg9t=5dd48cfc5428ed8612314deaa691e318
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