Bittersweet

Poignant news this week - that Siobhan Dowd has been awarded the 2009 Carnegie Medal for 'Bog Child'. This is wonderful news, but also so very sad because Siobhan died of cancer in 2007. Royalties from the sale of her four books go to the Siobhan Dowd Trust, which helps disadvantaged children. Her publisher, David Fickling, says: 'Children need stories. Siobhan believed that stories help children to think and if they can think, then they are free.'

Siobhan delivered four books in three years before her premature death at the age of 47 (though I'm inclined to think all death is premature when there's so much to learn, love and do in life).

Remember what writer Lisa Ratcliffe, who died a few months ago and who was a wonderful, feisty, resilient non-self-pitying voice right to the end, said: 'Writers, write!' As the comparethemeerkats.com advert has it, 'Simples!'

On a much more cheerful note, my younger son is fourteen today. He and his brother are gorgeous, bright and loving - having them in my life has been a privilege and joy which I wouldn't have missed for the world. I've been looking at photos of his extreme adorableness over the years and can't believe he's the age he is. (What a trite thing to say - but the swiftness of these years takes me by surprise all the time.) So it's lashings of Coke and loads of chocolate cake later - yay!

Would you credit it?

If you scroll down this blog to the 10th and 15th April, you'll find a couple of posts I wrote about 'Carrion Jane' - that is, the successful 'mash-up' novel called 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'. Yes, really. It does exist. It is a success, though daunting when you come across it in a bookshop, with a lovely Regency miss in an Empire-line muslin dress but with the whole of her lower jawbone, teeth, sinews and gunk on full display. Quite puts one off one's afternoon tea.

I talked about how this success seems to be breeding more horror-lit mash-ups, and put forward a few spoof versions of my own, including 'Prince Albert, Royal Werewolf', tee hee. Well, hush my mouth, somebody must have been listening. In this week's 'Bookseller' Hodder and Stoughton announce that they've acquired 'Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter'! This worthy tome has been 'proactively' sought out because this is a 'growing area' (I better get back to my own list and get writing, then!) It was bought for a 'good five figure sum' through agent Antony Topping, who, by the way, is the agent who represents C.J. Sansom, a writer I much admire. Hmn. In the novel Queen Vic is a demon hunter who protects the empire from werewolves and demons. So now you know why she was none-too-amused. Maybe it was the empire on which the sun never set because if it did, all these nasty beasties would come creeping out of the woodwork. And maybe that's why Prince Albert (see above) had to die ...

If you're in any need of further ghoulish humour, how's this: Father's Day is nearly upon us and Tesco and W.H. Smith have both been taken to task for displaying 'The Crimes of Josef Frizl' as a book you might like to give to your dear old pa. Granted, it was only in a couple of stores, but really. The Lewisham branch of W.H. Smith had in it their 'Top 50 Books for Dad' display.

Stick to the slippers, the Simpsons tankard, the table snooker or the Old Spice gift set, I'd say.

Beanstalks and Movie Magic

Well, phew, elder son has now finished his AS levels. I'll draw a veil over the process, but my grey hair count is definitely up. I just have to see my students through their A levels, then there's the Winchester Writers' Conference, then my summer school at Oxford University's Department of Continuing Education, then ... HOLIDAY!

I'm sending Get Well wishes to Sally Zigmond, whose blog 'The Elephant in the Writing Room' is listed on my blog roll to the right. She's had a fall and broken her leg and has just come home from hospital. Her article on how to accept and act on criticism as a writer has just appeared in this month's 'Writing Magazine' - in it she quotes the lovely Jo Derrick, who edits the Yellow Room Magazine, and my good self (although the editor has spelt my name wrong. Sigh. It's a double 's', you know). Thanks for the mention, Sally, and all the best for your recovery.

Also on my blog roll is the wonderful Tess Gerritsen, who is currently debating the usefulness of online promotion for writers. Her feeling is that traditional methods have worked for her, but then she is an already-established writer (and she is astute enough to be using online methods as well.) The problem is that it is very hard to gauge exactly how much effect on sales there is. She does feel, and I agree, that online presence is a wonderful thing for the new or 'mid-list' author, as you can make contact with so many people at such little expense.

Here is a quote from her post of 27th May: 'But the most important thing you can do as a writer is to write. Write the next book. And the next ... If you write two books a year, that's twice a year readers and booksellers will encounter your name. But these books must be good books. That's the given in all this promotional talk. The books must make a reader want to pick up your next book.'

'Two books a year!' I hear you squeak. Bloody hell!

And they've got to be 'good books' too? Have mercy!

I've talked about this conundrum before - to be a success, you need to be churning out the words at a stunning rate. You need to be full of mental energy, commitment and industry, you need to be your own publicist and marketeer - and to top it all, you need to be hitting your literary peak at all times. Yet, when you read articles, how-to books and interviews, you come across the view that a good work of fiction needs time to brew, time to mature, time for plot-lines to develop, characters to grow, themes and notions to coalesce: writing a novel is not like Jack chucking the magic beans out of the window and next morning finding a fully-grown beanstalk leading up to the clouds, the castle, the riches. Your book needs time - but the industry dictates that you work to a timetable. How to resolve this?

While you ponder these deep and worrying issues, perhaps you'd like a little light relief: but I warn you, this is yet another cunning scheme Karen of 'Get On With It' and Lane of 'Lane's Write' have come up with in their plan to stop all the rest of us ever getting on with our work - leaving the field clear for them. Yes, ladies, I'm onto you! If you are not inclined to heed my warnings, head over to their blogs, also on the blogroll and enjoy some movie magic.

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.

Inspiration, mainly

First of all, many congratulations to Carol Ann Duffy on becoming the new Poet Laureate. If you haven't read her work before, check out 'The World's Wife' where the poems are written from the perspective of the consorts of famous characters from history and mythology. Try 'Mrs Icarus', 'Mrs Darwin', 'Mrs Aesop', 'Euridice', 'The Kray Sisters'. And the choice of Carol Ann for Laureate is one in the eye for Mrs Schofield, who, you may remember, complained about the inclusion of 'Education for Leisure' on the GSCE English syllabus, whereupon the craven exam board removed it. (See my post on this at http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2008/09/aqas-unkindest-cut.html )Whereupon Ms Duffy replied with a poem called 'Mrs Schofield's GCSE': Google it and have a chortle.

Secondly, two of my fellow bloggers, Karen at http://writewritingwritten.blogspot.com and Denise at http:writinghumbug.blogspot.com, have been talking about setting themselves wordcounts in order to get novels well underway or completed as soon as possible. This is a technique that's worked well for me in the past, especially, I find, if you set yourself a daily or weekly target which is just a bit below what you can reasonably achieve. If you set the target too high and fall short, demoralisation kicks in, just as if you start a really rigid diet, two fingers of Kit-Kat make you jack the whole thing in and binge on a whole box of Lindors (I'm speaking hypothetically, of course. Ahem.) If you set the target at, say 500 words, and find you've written 732, then high glee results and you start to believe in yourself as a proper writer. Then you find yourself wanting to break that barrier every time you write, so you might raise the stakes to 750 words and blow me if you don't come close to 1,000! Try this out: if you're new or lacking in confidence, start with 200 or so - you may surprise yourself.

Finally, here are the two sides of the coin, composition-wise. So many of us exist in a love-hate relationship with our writing. You feel pressurised, dissatisfied, you want to break it off because it's not perfect - but you can't. There's the constant presence of your writing self at your shoulder, in your brain, your heart, your gut. You dream stories, you practise phrases, you think think think like a writer all the time. It's a burden. It's a source of despair. It's also a joy, a revelation, a triumph. Here are two examples of the Janus-headed nature of writing as a calling: a few weeks ago Colm Toibin, in The Guardian, talked of the wretchedness of his craft: see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/02/colm-toibin-writing-pleasure I tell you, it makes grim reading. He says writing is 'never fun or anything' and that what he likes best is 'The money'. 'I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway and I would disapprove of it.'

Now, God knows, writing can be a complete bugger sometimes: plots need to be wrestled with, descriptions morph into cliche, self-belief is elusive, publishing deals even more so - but his is just such a cheerless, humourless, Eeyorish view! Writing can be rewarding in far more than the financial sense (just as well, eh?): it can make you feel proud and fulfilled, it can lead to friendships, it challenges and frustrates and delights. There's so much to be said for coming across a passage you wrote some time ago and feeling a glow of pride in knowing you wrote that, in that way, at that time, and it worked! In answer to Colm Toibin, A.L. Kennedy said 'The joy of writing for a living is that you get to do it all the time. The misery is that you have to, whether you're in the mood or not. ... Then again, making something out of nothing, overturning the laws of time and space, building something for strangers just because you think they might like it and hours of absence from self - that's fantastic.' Hari Kunzru and John Banville both point out that as a writer you can never, except fleetingly, get it totally right. All you can do is, as Beckett says, 'Fail better'.

In the midst of the angst and the daily struggle and the words that won't come out right, remember this: there will be occasions when, miraculously, it all does come together. Where you're in the flow, in the zone, when your pen can't keep up with your brain, where there's sureness and confidence, utter joy in the words you produce, a rhythm and flow to the sequences of thought, when you - for a few minutes or half an hour - totally believe in yourself as a writer. You revel. You're inspired. You even believe you can come back to the desk the next day and recapture that fine rapture. Probably you won't: but keep coming back to the desk and one morning or one midnight, you'll be inspired again. It's moments like those that make it all worthwhile.

One of my favourite passages about the process of writing - and it even makes it successfully and movingly to the silver screen - is the episode in 'Doctor Zhivago' where Yury writes his poems to Lara, poems which will be famous. He writes them in the severe stillness of a Russian winter and the process is a holy one to him. Under political threat, with wolves congregating out on the midnight snow, he seizes preciousness and encapsulates it: 'his work took possession of him and he experienced the approach of what is called inspiration. At such moments the correlation of the forces controlling the artist is, as it were, stood on its head. The ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state of mind which he is trying to express, but with language, his instrument of expression. Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for man and turns wholly into music, not in the sense of outward, audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its inward flow. Then, like the current of a mighty river polishing stones and turning wheels by its very movement, the flow of speech creates in passing, by the force of its own laws, rhyme and rhythm and countless other forms and formations, still more important and until now undiscovered, unconsidered and unnamed. At such moments Yury felt that the main part of his work was not being done by him but by something which was above him and controlling him: the thought and the poetry of the world as it was at that moment and as it would be in the future. ... This feeling relieved him for a time of self-reproach, of dissatisfaction with himself, of the sense of his own nothingness.'

When Yury pauses, the wolves have gathered on the edge of the snowfield. Lara, soon to be lost forever, sleeps. Worries encroach: he 'was no longer in the mood to write.'

The moment of grace is gone. But it was there and it cannot be lost. He reached out and seized it. So can you.

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.

Winchester Writers' Conference Programme

My regular readers (you're still with me, aren't you?) will know that each summer I teach at the Winchester Writers' Conference. This is a busy, packed affair which this year will run from the weekend of the 3rd July. The programme is now at last up on the conference website at http://www.writersconference.co.uk, so do go and take a look as there's a huge range of courses, talks and appointments available with writers, editors and agents. The Saturday programme is so full that the biggest problem is always what to select from so many talks. I'll be teaching a mini-course on the Friday called 'Making Memorable Scenes' and on Saturday I'll be giving a talk called 'From Short Hop to Long Haul' about making the transition from writing short fiction to tackling a novel. The conference also runs writing competitions - when I started going there as a delegate, before I was published, it gave me a real thrill to win some prizes there: anything that validates you as a writer is an encouragement. To be amongst other writers who are sharing the same hopes, dreams and doubts as you is also balm to the soul, especially if you are unlucky enough not to be supported in your ambitions by those around you. People who attend Winchester tend to be exhausted by the experience but also pepped up, their enthusiasm refreshed, their knowledge of the publishing industry broadened. It's a great place to network and make friends.