Category: Writing

All things writerly are mused on here

Where I muse on compliments, chain letters and not liking cancer.

Not so long ago the lovely Sue Fortin included me in her list of Friendly Blogger award recipients. The Friendly Blogger award is a generally nice, happy, caring, sharing way of bigging up blogs you love. Us little individual bloggers scibbling away in our tiny corners of the modern Interweb appreciate all the support and links we can get, and so a bit of sharing the blog love is always welcome. The Friendly Blogger award invites you to “pay it forward” if you will, and when you read down to the bottom of this post you will see that I’m sharing a few of my fave blogs for your delectation. The award also invites bloggers to share seven interesting personal things about themselves. Sadly  my fundamental British/Northern/middle-class ness prevents me from doing that. Seven things? About me? Seriously, I’ve been with my hubbie over 15 years now, and he probably only knows about four things. I consider that a sign of a worrying level of emotional outpouring as it is.

The Friendly Blogger award also got me thinking about some of the downsides of my modern uber-connected life, the main one being that, although being easily connected to masses of people all over the shop opens you up to equivalent masses of loveliness, it also brings a whole world of opportunities to get irritated with humanity. Here are a few of my main InterWeb things that make me go Grrr.

1. Just for the record, I think that cancer is a Bad Thing. But here’s where I’m setting myself apart from those annoying Facebook status updates on the subject. I’m just going to assume you feel the same. Frankly, if you don’t, you’re a bonker and any further discussion would be pointless anyway. What I’m not going to ask you to do, is copy and post my view that cancer is a Bad Thing onto your blog or status update. I’m not going to imply that if you don’t do that, you’re a living embodiment of evil. I’m not going to suggest that failure to comply with a copy & paste instruction suggests that you are somehow in league with cancer and in favour of your friends and family suffering painful and premature deaths. I’m definitely not going to imply that if you fail to copy & paste as ordered you are not a True Friend.

For future reference, valiant status updaters, please assume that, when it comes to cancer, I’m against it. I’m also opposed to many other major life-shortening illnesses and pretty much anything that can be shown to kill children, puppies or kittens. Thank-you.

2. Secondly, internet, I would very much like you to learn to do simple maths. This would stop you, for example, from tweeting comments about how a month with five Sats, Suns & Mons in it only comes along every 800 years. This is obviously preposterous. Every month with 31 days (of which there are 7 every year) will have three days which appear 5 times. As a rough guestimate I’d figure that any given set of three days must appear around about once a year. And yet, every time there’s a 31 day month I see one of these tweets or status updates. That means I’m irritated unneccessarily at least seven times a year. So why not think about the numbers before you click on post and save me the mental effort of checking your working? 

Now I know that lots of people struggle with maths. I’ve taught adult numeracy in the past, and fully understand that maths is a subject that lots of people find intimidating and a bit overwhelming. That’s fine (well, it’s not fine really, but I’ll save the discussion of the bigger failures in education that have created that situation for another day). What I would suggest though, is that if you’re one of those people who suffers from a touch of Maths-blindness you shouldn’t write status updates or tweets that rely on a mathematical oddity for the point they’re making. There’s a high chance you’ll be wrong, and that will irritate me. And it should be clear by now, lovely internet, that I do feel that you need to be dedicating a higher percentage of your time and brainpower to not irritating me than is currently the case.

3. Actually, it’s not just the maths, I’d actually like you to think more right across the board. So, when you get an email that alerts you to a specific crime wave that is spreading across the globe, what I’d like you do to is pop over to Google, copy in a couple of key phrases from that email and click search. What you’ll probably find is that the email is a hoax, and you’ll have saved me the time of searching myself and then deleting the email, and you’ll have saved yourself from looking like a gullible fool. And again, I’m less irritated. Win:Win:Win.

4. Finally, I would just like to remind you internet, that, back in the old days of mail being delivered by a man (or indeed lady) who had to physically carry stuff to your house, there was such a thing as a chain letter. That was a letter that carried the promise of much reward if the receiver passed on the letter to x people, and, often, the threatened dire consequences for those who did not. Those sorts of chain letters were a fairly revolting attempt to prey on the superstitious and the vulnerable. Status updates/emails/tweets that demand reposting, or which promise great luck for those who repost, are exactly the same thing, only now they get reposted by people who would have thrown away a paper chain letter (and who would never have dreamed of starting one).

So don’t do it. Don’t repost messages that promise great riches for those who continue the chain. Doing so is manipulative. If you wish your friends luck and happiness contact them directly and tell them that. Don’t post it to a general audience with a veiled threat against those who don’t participate included. That is Very Bad Internetting indeed.

Ok. I think that is all. I’m breathing normally again and my little fists are starting to unclench after good venting of irritations, but please tell the world about your internet irritants in the comments (or indeed tell me why I’m wrong and facebook statuses promising to make me rich if I repost are beneficial to society).

As promised I’ll finish with a handful of blog recommendations. These are mostly of the writerly variety. As noted back here I don’t very often write about writing, so here are a few suggestions of some people who do, and do so rather well:

Talli Roland: http://talliroland.blogspot.com/ Talli writes a bit of general journal stuff about what’s happening in her life, but also about her writing and publishing experiences. As she’s just announced that she’s self-pubbing her next novel I’m watching her blog with interest to see how that goes.

Raw Light: http://rawlightblog.blogspot.com/?v=0 Jane Holland’s Raw Light blog is celebrating it’s 6th birthday at the moment. A mix of writing about poetry, prose writing and anything else that crops up.

Hollyannegetspoetic: http://hollyannegetspoetic.wordpress.com/ A poetry blog – this one generally has 2-3 new poems every week, so not even writing about writing, just actual writing. And (for those of you in Worcestershire) you’ll be supporting one of my fave local poets too.

Sally Jenkins: http://sallyjenkins.wordpress.com/ Good stuff on here on all different sorts of writing, including articles and short stories 

So there you go, four writerly blogs to make up for the fact that I can’t focus my brain enough to blog about what I actually do. As ever, if you like please subscribe either as an email subscriber or via NetWorked Blogs (and, yeah, I know that RSS feed isn’t working quite right at the moment – I’m working on it, promise.)

Where I muse on chick lit, writing and accepting feedback

There’s a bit of a rumpus in chick lit world at the moment. Earlier in September the author, Polly Courtney, publicly dumped her publisher, Harper Collins, ostensibly for marketing her books with what she felt were misleadingly chick lit-ish covers. She explains in her own words more fully here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/16/chick-lit-womens-fiction

This was closely followed by a flurry of news stories detailing the fall-off in chick lit sales (for example http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/have-we-fallen-out-of-love-with-chick-lit-2361445.html), and topped off by this delightfully reasonably headlined piece by Harriet Walker in the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/harriet-walker-saccharine-silage-that-fails-women-2361506.html

Obviously, what this debate needs is another random internet opinion, so here we go. To start off in any sort of half intelligent debate, it’s important to agree about what your terminology actually means. Doing so can avoid a lot of unneccessary bickering over stuff it turns out everyone actually agrees about. So what do we mean by chick lit?

Probably most of us who frequent bookshops or spend inordinate numbers of hours browsing on Amazon can bring a picture into our minds of what we perceive as a classic chick lit novel. You’re probably picturing a pink, or predominantly pastel coloured, cover with sparkly writing and a semi-cartoonish picture of a woman wearing shoes. Alternatively, you might be picturing one of those stylised photo covers showing just a woman’s legs, or a pair of hands entwined. But that’s just the cover. What makes a story chick lit?

Again, the classic understanding would probably suggest that we’re talking about a youngish single-ish female protagonist, a plot that’s heavy on romance, a contemporary setting, a good dash of humour, and usually a story that involves some sort of self-discovery or self-development on the part of the heroine. So let’s look at a couple of those writers that the Independent cites as being emblematic of the fall-off in chick lit sales. Do they match that template?

We’ll start with Dorothy Koomson. I would suggest that Koomson’s early work fits well into that classic chick lit template. The Chocolate Run, for example is a story laced with humour and centred around a heroine learning to trust rather than run in a developing relationship. But Koomson’s work has shifted and developed over time. Her more recent novels, notably The Ice-cream Girls (which is fabulous – you should all definitely read it) would probably be better described as psychological thrillers. The cover art, though, remains stylised and heavy on the pastels.

Marian Keyes is another interesting author. Often described as one of the first chick lit writers, she has been seen as one of the big players in the genre for over 15 years. Her work is certainly funny, and generally follows female protagonists. However, in a number of her novels, for example This Charming Man  or Rachel’s Holiday, any romance is a secondary plot, while the story’s main focus is on an issue such as addiction or domestic abuse.

So, it looks like it’s actually kind of tricky to define what we mean by chick lit, and that’s before we even start to try to unpick the broader term used by some booksellers, “Women’s Fiction.” What is, perhaps,even more fascinating is the level of vitriol towards what is perceived as light entertainment aimed at women. You don’t generally see a lot of newspaper opinion pieces arguing that the wide availability of action thriller novels has stunted male intellectual development, so it makes me uneasy that female writers are expected to in some way represent their whole gender.

There are essentially only two types of book that matter to me as a reader or writer. There are good books, and there are lousy books. There are lousy books in most genres, and chick lit is by no means exempt from the lazy and the formulaic, but there is also some really classy and interesting work out there. (I’m particularly liking Sarra Manning at the minute). Being light, being funny, and being by and about a woman, does not make your story intrinsically inferior. Suggesting that it does was daft when people did it about Jane Austen and it’s still daft now.

Which shouldn’t be taken to imply that I have no issues with the way that fiction by women, and about women, is sold and marketed at the moment. Here I can only write from my own prejudices and opinions, so please jump into the comments and argue with me if you don’t agree.

About 3 months ago, I attended a talk by a editor from a very large mainstream publisher of popular fiction, who said that they were looking for chick lit that was lighter, frothier and more escapist. That made my heart sink a little. There is absolutely a place for those books, and for writers and readers who love those books, but looking at writers like Marian Keyes, tells us that in the past chick lit was a much broader church. It does worry me slightly that publishers aren’t seeing a place for more issue-led or just slightly edgier romantic comedy. And it’s also concerning that books like Dorothy Koomson’s more recent work might be being marketed in such a way that is making it harder for them to reach the widest possible potential readership. The pastel cover will attract Koomson’s existing readers who recognise her “brand” but will it encourage regular readers of crime and thriller novels to give her work a go?

It’s also interesting, I think, to look at another standout successful romance novel of recent years, this time by a male writer. David Nicholls’ One Day was a huge hit with readers, and spawned the obligatory bestseller’s movie. The book was published under a very gender-neutral orange and cream cover, the colours and artwork being striking but very un-girly. My guess it that the same book, by a female writer, would have been marketed quite differently, in a manner that could have alienated a potential wider audience, including a lot male readers.

And this brings me onto my own writing. Now I don’t normally blog about writing. I do have a slight sense that writing about writing is a tad on the self-indulgent side, which given that in this sentence I’m now writing about writing about writing, probably means I’m about to drown in a torrent of my own self-importance. Moving on…

I have just received my feedback report from the RNA New Writers Scheme on the current draft of my first novel, which would probably fall under the broad heading of “chick lit”. There were some really positive comments, and some really useful feedback about plot and pacing which has got my head buzzing with rewrite ideas. I am, though, unsure whether those ideas will ever make it into the manuscript, as there are elements to the book, which I’m starting to feel are too fundamental to change, but really weaken the chances of interesting an agent or publisher in the finished manuscript.

For example, the story is told from the point of view of four different first person narrators, a technique which I now realise was quite ambitious for a first novel! I also now realise that a lot of readers (and writers) just don’t like first person narration. So do I rewrite the whole thing in the third person, as my feedback report suggests? I’m unenthusiastic about the idea at the moment, partly just because that’s a massive job, but also because I, personally, really like the different narrative voices, and do I really want to end up with a novel that I don’t like as much?

So, what to do next? Redraft using the feedback on pacing/plotting but leave the narrative style alone, accepting that the chances of publication in that form are beyond super-super-super-slim? Redraft fully into a third person narrative, and risk losing part of what I love in the manuscript? Or just chalk this down as novel writing attempt number 1 and move onto something else? At the moment that last option seems to be beckoning. I have an idea for novel number 2 which is buzzing at my brain, but would that be “giving up” too easily? Would it be better to do another redraft of number 1 and try to follow through with that piece of work? Decisions. Decisions. Comments about chick lit and suggestions on the writing both welcome – do you always take all feedback on board, or do you make decisions about when to accept feedback points and when to stick to your guns? And when do you walk away from a work-in-progress?