Dreams and DIY publishing

You'll notice, regular readers of mine, that I've been fiddling about with my colour scheme - as if I've nothing better to do! Queen of Displacement Activity, remember! I'm not sure I like what I've done so may revert to the template - let me know what you think.

The good news today is that my fictionfire communications problems are, I think, solved. Site support was there, to a degree, but responses came at the speed of a snail. You can always deluge me with messages at info@fictionfire.co.uk to test it out!

You know how there are certain phases in your year when you know you just cannot afford to let your guard down and relax (apart from fiddling with blog colour-schemes, that is!) - that's where I am now. I'm juggling nagging of A level son and A level students, doing a large amount of editing and report-writing, and getting ready for the May fictionfire courses. I look out at the sunshine and hope this weather holds so that my students can enjoy an Oxford college at its absolute best. Trinity has a gorgeous garden with long open lawns and will be well worth strolling around.

I looked out the window yesterday to see a funny white streak in the sky - oh, a vapour-trail! Planes flying once more, but the London Book Fair was seriously affected by the inability of cohorts of foreign agents and editors to attend. The advantage may have been that some proposals for books got more of a chance to shine, being not so swamped by the volume of meetings and deals there would normally be. I am crossing my fingers really really hard for a couple of friends whose agents intended promoting their books there.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article by Cosmo Landesman about the writer Stephen Benatar, who is about to break through to a wider readership after thirty years in the literary desert. He's a resourceful, bloody-but-unbowed chap, who accosts people, asking them if they would 'care to look' at his book, hand-selling it on an individual basis. Landesman succumbs to what he first thinks is a 'pity purchase' but then realises that Benatar who 'is not one of the deluded; he is one of the talented' - and the world is waking up to that, with a British edition of one of his books, 'Wish her Safe at Home' coming out. Why has Benatar single-mindedly gone on printing and selling his books in the face of indiffference? Not because he wants to be famous: 'he wants to be read.' 'All over Britain there are Benatars - hopeful men and women who, despite critical indifference and commercial failure, keep writing novels.' Landesman recites the gloomy statistics with which we are all familiar: the near-impossibility of being published, of earning a living, of maintaining a toehold in the literary world. He tells us of eleven novels Benatar tried to gain mainstream publishing for, to be rejected by the well-worn phrase, 'Not one for us.' We hear how Benatar married, had children, taught English to survive, eventually was selected from the slush pile in 1982- only to see that temporary success wither away - and still he kept on writing. He got John Carey, a prestigious name, to write a foreword to a reisssue of 'Wish Her Safe at Home'. No publisher would touch it. So he set up his own imprint and went on to sell 4,000 copies himself. He uses charm, a polite relentlessness, a direct engagement with potential customers who feel they've had personal attention: it works. Finally, by chance, he pushed (or rather ushered - 'pushed' is too pushy a word) a copy of 'Wish Her Safe at Home' into the hands of  a man who happened to be an editor with The New York Review of Books, who loved it. Now he's getting attention, his now-ex wife says 'I admit there were times when I thought he was wasting his time. He had the talent but not the luck. And now he's been vindicated.'

This is a story of commitment and determination, of incredible resilience in the face of knock-backs. But more than any of that, it's a story of faith. Stephen Benatar believes and has always believed in the worth of what he writes. It's a quiet, prolonged self-belief, quite detached, it seems, from the influence of the opinions of others. He does not care about the success of other writers. He does not care about being 'recognised in the streets.' He does it because he has something to say and he wants people to hear it: he does not want to go into that good night where all are silenced without a fight: 'My greatest fear is that my life's work will just vanish.'

This is a story about modern publishing, about self-publishing and marketing, about happenstance and fate. It's about how writers want to leave their footprints in the sand. It tells us it's never too late, if we are true to the contract with ourselves. As Landesman says at the end of the article, 'don't let your dream die. One day it might just come true.'

Let's all hang onto that thought.

fictionfire communication glitch

Just over two weeks to go to my fictionfire course, Character Building, on the 1st of May. If you're interested, do please check out the details on my site and make your booking!

Ironic, then, that I'm being driven mad by failures in delivery by my website email service when I reply to enquiries. It's not always happening, so it's hard to know just how many people haven't heard from me, which is so galling! If you contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk please be assured, I do reply. Please check your spam/junk filter in case that's the problem and add info@fictionfire.co.uk and mail@fictionfire.co.uk to your safe list. If you haven't heard from me within a day do please get in touch again - and you can ring me on 07827 455723.

Winchester Calling!

The programme for this year's Writers' Conference at the University of Winchester has now been posted online. This year, incredibly, will be the 30th year of the conference, and it has been organised from the start by Barbara Large who deserves all credit for such a herculean task! She's genuinely passionate about helping new writers and very good at arm-twisting (with extreme charm!) writers, editors and agents into appearing at the conference to dispense invaluable advice. It's not just a conference about advice on how to write, though - it's about opportunities. Here you get the chance to hear what's hot, what publishers are looking for, how best to pitch to them - and you get the chance to pitch direct at the One-to-One appointments, where, in a crowded and noisy room, you get fifteen minutes with a writer, an editor or an agent, to make your mark. So no stress involved, then! Less formally, you get the chance to network at the lunches and dinners, at the bar, in the queue for coffee, while strolling around the Book Fair. You never know who you'll meet, you never know what will come of it. There are quite a number of writers who are published as a result of meeting someone at the Conference.

If you do plan to come, don't wait for the printed conference programme, which tends to be slow to arrive: get online now and start booking, especially for the One-to-Ones which are so popular, they book up very quickly.

I've been teaching at the conference now for over a decade. This year I'll be teaching a mini-course on Friday 25th, 'The Right Perspective and the Telling Voice', and on Saturday 26th I'll be giving a lecture on 'Sensory Perceptions', looking at how you can use imagery and detail to give texture and depth to your writing. I'm always delighted to meet old friends there - and to meet any of my blog readers or fictionfire clients! By the way, I hope that you're popping across to fictionfire often to read my Quote of the Week section under Writing Inspiration. To be honest, I'm not quite managing a literary quote every week, but I'm proud of how this section is shaping up. I don't just give you a quotation; I write a little mini-essay - a riff about what that quote means to me or how it can help you. I'm hoping it provides you with the mixture of inspiration and practical guidance which is my aim with fictionfire as a whole. Enjoy!

Diagram Result 2010 and The Yellow Room Competition

For those who are waiting with bated breath for an update, The Whinging Tooth is currently on  a stay of execution till next week. I'm currently quite happy to soldier on, on the grounds that a little bit of jumpiness and an inability to put any pressure on it when chewing is tolerable if I can keep the blighter in my jaw and therefore stop my face falling in. My dentist, who's been quite heroic in treating it is definitely of the opinion that we should call it a day and get rid. I think, next week in the dentist's chair, I shall pretend that I can chew perfectly well with it!

Also following up on my earlier post about the Diagram Prize, the results came out last week. I forgot to vote, actually, but you may have noticed a certain dilatoriness in my blogging, the result of too many distractions, too much work, a year, in fact that has spent its first quarter being absolutely manic, absolutely draining. Bottom of the list (ouch) came 'The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, followed by 'Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots' (sorry, Karen, I know you liked that one!), 'Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter' (wouldn't it have been great if the author's name had been Robin), then 'Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich' which initially seemed a strong contender. Second place went to 'What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?', which never did it for me, so I'm glad it didn't win - first place, then, to 'Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes' by Daina Taimina, which definitely has the requisite mixture of the earnest and the surreal. Wooh!

Now, my apologies to Jo Derrick as this is terribly late, but her latest short story competition for The Yellow Room Magazine closes on the 31st of March. So what are you waiting for? Get over there this instant and find out more!

Finally, a gentle reminder that my May fictionfire courses are imminent: Character Building on the 1st and Essential Editing on the 15th. If you're thinking of coming along, I'd love to see you: check the details at the fictionfire website. I'll keep reminding you, you know: you'll have to give in.

The Lights Are On, But ...

For those who are interested, the dental saga goes on. In spite of my excellent dentist's best efforts, the tooth won't settle down and I can't put any pressure on it, so its days may be numbered. At this rate I'll be mumbling sops of bread in milk - but should end up a champion gurner, so all is not lost.

A couple of weeks ago the entry pack for this year's Bookseller Industry Awards was included in The Bookseller. It's always salutary, as a cree-aytive person, to keep in mind the hard-nosed business we're trying to supply with 'product'. On the page devoted to Children's Bookseller of the Year, previous winners are listed: 2005 Ottakar's, 2006 Ottakar's, 2007 Borders, 2008 Borders, 2009 Borders.

Aye, and where are they now?

I'm really missing Borders. What makes it worse is passing the store in Oxford with its massive floorspace and all the lights on at full blast, it seems, since Christmas. Somebody said to me that this was probably about security but honestly, every single light is on - have they not heard of global warming?

Well done to Kathryn Bigelow for winning those Oscars and with a film that cost $7 million to make, as opposed to Avatar's $185. I was checking out the awards (and the frocks!) this morning and heard an interview with some chap who'd worked with her on Hurt Locker and seemed to be claiming she was so great it wasn't like working with a woman at all! How patronising is that? No wonder it's taken 80 years for a woman to win best director. Strikes me that the film industry is just one big 'who can pee the highest' competition anyway.

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.

Fashion statements in man-made fibre

The wonderful Sally Zigmond, who blogs at http://theelephantinthewritingroom.blogspot.com/ (see my blogroll to the right), now has a new blog devoted to her novel Hope against Hope, which will be published in April. It's at http://hopeagainsthopebysallyzigmond.blogspot.com/. In it she reveals fascinating facts about the Victorian background to the novel and the Harrogate setting. I popped over to it today and discovered that the man-made fabric Crimplene (remember that girls?) was named after the River Crimple! When I was a little girl, my mother spent a vast amount of her time sewing clothes for herself and us at her Singer sewing machine (which had a beautiful domed wooden case to it and weighed a bleedin' ton) - ah yes, the seersucker nighties, the Crimplene dresses to be worn with white Acrilan cardigans or hand-knitted boleros, the two-piece 'costumes', the delicate tissue-paper patterns folded with fiendish cleverness into the Butterick envelopes, with spiky looking Sixties misses with pointy shoes, standing, hip forward and neat handbag over the crook of the elbow, on the covers. The way the garments never quite turned out to have the glamour of the illustration. My grandmother clicking away at knitted jumpers, scarves and hats, all from patterns in Woman's Weekly. My sister and I, meanwhile, were making pencil-holders that always fell over and model Dougals from The Magic Roundabout and Advent crowns, courtesy of Val and Peter and John at Blue Peter (Get down, Shep!) Heady days, my dears. You have to ask yourself if life is as fulfilling now. At least it's not so itchy (Bri-Nylon sheets, aarggh ...!).