Downsizing

After living in the wilderness (well, Cornwall) for seven years, I’ve moved back to the city. A huge change of pace which also requires a big attitudinal change. In Cornwall I had a 4-storey cottage with direct views over the river from every floor. In the city, for the same price, I can barely afford a two-bedroom flat with views over various air-filtering devices on the roof next door - or a one-bedroom flat. In Cornwall I had a painting studio with a Belfast sink and a balcony. Now I have to consider whether I can paint at all.
This is not a nightmare but a challenge: an interesting opportunity to look at my life and how I now hope to live it. And, strangely, my writing process seems to be going hand in hand with my moving process. In Cornwall I wrote my novel – all 100,000 words of it. Lots of words, lots of space. As I prepared to move, I began editing – both my possessions (I gave away or sold much of what I owned) and my novel. And now, in the city, I’ve reached the ultimate in downsizing: the one-bedroom flat, and the blurb.
Blurb.
The word says it all. Blurb is the sound you make when you’re trying to think one up. And it’s no coincidence that blurb is very similar to blub (a consequence of attempting to write one) blur (what happens to your eyes after doing so) and blue (how you feel once you’ve written it).
Not immediately, of course. The first reaction on completing a blurb is a kind of religious vapour. I did it! I wrote a blurb! - rapidly followed by the falling-to-earth realisation that your blurb is actually a crock of s**t. As some wise soul said, if you can do it in 200 words, why bother writing the novel?
Because, it seems, the perfect blurb is a super-clever selling device to seduce potential readers inside the covers.
I have blurbs coming out of my ears. If only one of them worked. Mine is a novel which hovers on the literary/commercial borders, so blurbing is a tricky balancing act between making my book sound like a chick-lit novel and making it sound incredibly lit’ry, dahling. And, like a one-bed flat, a blurb has to work hard for its diminutive size. It has to succinctly sum up the novel. It has to hook the reader. And it has to give a sense of the style and tone of the writing.
Do I begin with a quote from the book? Should I focus on the nuts-and-bolts of the narrative or on the underlying themes? Do I tailor it to work with the cover image?What stays? What goes? Should I keep it short and succinct or expand it to include the three parallel narratives? Should it end with a question, or is that old hat?
In my new one-bedroom flat (when I find it) I hope to live, write and paint. May my blurb, too, prove the cliche that small is beautiful and that downsizing is the Next Big Thing.

Reading in public

On Saturday I did my first proper poetry reading. It was down in Winchester at the prize-giving for the Virginia Warbey prize. I didn't win, but two of my poems were longlisted. Before that I had entered a poetry slam at a festival and taken part in a few readings at the end of courses. I also had to read after one of my short stories was shortlisted for another competition.

I have to say that I find this terrifying. I'm not really sure why; if you have any ideas to help me cope I would be deeply grateful. It's embarrassing too; I'm a professional psychologist and the words of Jesus, "Physician, heal thyself" come back to mock me.

I think it's a legacy from school, where the prospect of reading aloud to the class was even scarier than Clifton Hughes, who gobbed all the way down my arm at the bus stop. At work I have to run leadership programmes for senior managers from high profile organisations, and I do that without blinking. When it comes to reading my own work I shrivel. Just writing about it now I can feel my heart spreading till it no longer fits in my chest.

This is something I would like to get over. I rehearse a lot before readings, know most of my work by heart, and think I'm actually quite good at it. When I listen to others, they sometimes mumble out the words in a monotonous, inaudible voice, whereas I try to put some energy into it, and look at the audience.

I just hate it.

A few days ago I found out I've been shortlisted for the Live Canon poetry prize. That's a thrill as it is judged by the fantastic Glyn Maxwell. And the relief is that the awards ceremony will feature actors reading our poems: we won't have to do it. Perhaps I should only enter ones like that.

Please leave a comment if you share this phobia, or if you have any tips for how to handle it.

Photo: Jo Barker (08/11/2011)

The drama of dinosaurs

When I started school, there weren't many dinosaurs around. We sang 'Listen to the chorus of the brontosaurus' at hymn practice, and knew all the classic names such as tyrannosaurus rex and iguanadon, but we lacked the plethora of amazing reptiles available to today's small children. The hundreds of dinosaur species discovered in the past two decades were still hidden below layers of rock, just waiting to be brought into the light. Well, obviously not waiting, as they'd been dead for millions of years and couldn't give a shit whether anyone ever found them, but you know what I mean.

One of my favourite films, however, was The Valley of Gwangi – the product of someone in the 1960s having the inspired idea of adding prehistoric beasts to the western genre. When I was a bit older, I read Jurassic Park and became obsessed with it, eagerly awaiting the movie. I enjoyed the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs in the late 1990s and am now a huge fan of Planet Dinosaur. So, in short, I love dinosaurs – but have to admit that my limited knowledge of them mainly comes from entertainment.

If I were a paleontologist, I might grumble about Planet Dinosaur. I might feel annoyed that it wasn't me who got paid as a consultant it was dumbing down science for an audience that doesn't get excited unless there are shaky camera angles and an unrelenting kill-or-be-killed dramatic tension.

As a non-scientist, however, I can watch Planet Dinosaur for the simple fact that dinosaurs are awesome. I might briefly wonder how anyone knows that one had spots and another had stripes, or what evidence there is for herbivorous reptiles going moo and carnivores going RAARRRRRR, but I don't really mind if these are educated guesses as long as I keep getting to see MORE DINOSAURS.

Beyond that, with my writerly hat on, I also appreciate it for the way it uses imagination to impart scientific concepts to a general audience. Planet Dinosaur's attraction might at first glance lie in its CGI and the novelty of the latest scientific discoveries – but for me the appeal is in its use of the fossil record as the inspiration for stories.

A fossil of a damaged spinosaurus vertebra might look, to many people, like a random bit of rock. To the scientists working on it, the possibility that the damage was caused by the bite of a carcharodontosaurus must be incredibly exciting. The two points of view are a long way apart, and in Planet Dinosaur, it takes the power of a story to connect them.

In the first episode, a carcharodontosaurus has expended energy on killing a hapless oranosaurus. The suspense and gore of the kill is played out in all its glory. At last, carcharodontosaurus can tuck into its meal.

Then a spinosaurus – the largest land predator yet discovered – ominously appears at the edge of the forest clearing. Spinosaurus wants the kill. Carcharodontosaurus wants it too. In the eyes of the modern viewer, carcharodontosaurus has the moral advantage of having done all the work. Yet this is Cretaceous Africa. There are no morals. The essential element of any story – conflict – is in place.

Planet Dinosaur can never accurately recreate the moment at which the now-fossilised spinosaurus incurred the damage to its elongated neural spine. We can't know the exact circumstances of the bite, or witness every blow of an encounter that took place millions of years ago. A fictional scene, however, enables the general viewer to appreciate the excitement of scientific discovery and engage with the research that is continuing apace.

Fiction might seem incongruous with the rationality of science, but stories are still what people respond to. They are how we learn; they are how we make sense of concepts outside our own experience; they can inspire us to further our knowledge – and they are what makes Planet Dinosaur such compelling viewing.

Guest post by Scott Pack

Here’s a picture of a dodo.

More of a silhouette really, isn’t it? There are loads of these in my book.

You see, every entry in 21st Century Dodos is given a dodo rating of between one and five dodos. One being ‘not very rare’ and five for ‘extinct’. Although, thinking about it, I don’t think there are actually any One Dodo items in the book.

There are some Two Dodo entries though. C&A warrants just a pair, despite the fact that there hasn’t been a branch of their shop anywhere in the UK since 2001, as they are still going strong in Europe. Beyonce even has a clothing range there.

Telephone boxes are clearly still dotted around the landscape, so also get rated a 2, even though hundreds of them go unused every year (451 in Scotland neither received nor made a single call last year). Sadly, there are loads of Five Dodo entries ranging from Betamax to World of Sport, interludes to Texan bars. But what on earth am I going on about?

Well, my book is a collection of eulogies, tributes and fond farewells to the many inanimate objects that many of us grew up with but are now on the verge of extinction – a collection of 21st Century Dodos.
Things such as audio cassettes, the Ford Cortina, rotary dial telephones and Concorde. See? If you are in the mood for a bit of a nostalgia-fest then perhaps you’d like to check it out. All my royalties will go towards buying cake.

Tomorrow I'll be posting here as part of my blog tour. Visit Amazon to buy the book or if you'd like to purchase the ebook click here.

Bedfordhsire Readers Day

When I was a kid we never went to the library. I suppose this should have struck me as strange because my Dad was an avid reader and we were very skint. He always said though, that libraries weren't for people like us.

I was never 100% certain what he meant by this, but assumed that the big concrete building in the middle of Pontefract must be filled to the rafters with posh folk. No doubt they would be thumbing through the complete works of Thomas Hardy while drinking tea from dainty china cups.

Not that I'd ever seen any posh folk in Pontefract, but maybe that was because they were all hanging out in the library, or The Conservative Club.

It was not until I went to uni and was prevailed upon to join that I finally stood in line and became a library member. The first thing I noted was how bloody easy it was and the second were the huge signs everywhere saying no food or drink was to be consumed on the library premises. Not even tiny cups of Earl Grey tea.

I was like the kid given the keys to the sweet shop and took out the maximum number on my first day, staggering under the weight of twenty hardbacks as I made my way back to halls.

I remember the sweet pleasure of putting up my DMs and reading everything from Kafka to Jackie Collins. To be fair I probably should have been spending more time reading law books, given that that was what I was there for, but we won't dwell on that.

Back at home that Christmas, I tackled my Dad on how wrong he'd been. 'Libraries are for everyone,' I told him. 'Take that working class chip off your shoulder and join.'
He was mumbling something about the proletariat and the means of production when my Mum took another swig of her snowball and told me to ignore him. My Dad it turns
out, had been a member of Pontefract library, but he'd forgotten to take back the books he'd borrowed and had consequently been barred. He was also barred from The Hope and Anchor, but that was about something else entirely.

Anyway, since then, I've been a massive fan and user of libraries. In fact I have written huge swathes of my books in libraries. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many services they offer. And one of my faves is the plethora of reading groups. A group of very different people from completely different backgrounds, coming together to discuss books - how cool is that. And they don't even have to buy the books!

For this reason, I always try to accept any invitations from libraries to come and speak to reading groups. Put an author together with readers and well...you can't have any more fun outside of a hotel room. So it's with great pleasure that I get to plug a readers day for my local library service; Bedforshire. They do a sterling job and I am delighted to have been asked to take part on 15th October 2011 from 10-4pm. The cost is £8 but it is a whole day of book filled fun and the price includes refreshments and lunch.

There will be many more authors there besides me...Anna Stothard, Morag Joss, Trilby Kent, Simon Brett and Sophie Hannah.
I really really can't wait.

SAME AGAIN, PLEASE?

Last week the papers seized on a story about certain best-selling novelists whose sales have fallen dramatically in the past year. Jodi Picoult and Marian Keyes are among them. Here’s The Independent’s take on it:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/have-we-fallen-out-of-love-with-chick-lit-2361445.html

I don’t want to re-hash what the journalists are writing. But I find several things interesting about this story.

First, that women fiction writers are so often lumped together under the banner of chick-lit, whilst no mention was made at all of ‘lad-lit’ (does it still exist?) or, indeed, of the sales of any male writers.

Second, and leading on from this: what exactly is ‘chick-lit’? The universal (and often supercilious) answer appears to be novels with pastel covers adorned with stilettos, martini glasses, hearts and flowers – in which case, what are Jodi Picoult and Marian Keyes doing on the list?

Third, and leading on again: there seems to have been a recent trend among publishers who insist on creating ‘chick-lit’ style covers for a wide range of women’s fiction, regardless of content. A women’s fiction author recently made the headlines by leaving her publisher because of the way her novels were being portrayed by their covers.

A pattern begins to emerge. A sense of blanketing, of homogenisation. Of ‘more of the same.’

Publishers are running scared. It’s understandable. What with the economic climate, the rapidly changing environment of book-buying and reading and the rising costs of actually publishing books, let alone marketing them effectively, little wonder that publishers are becoming risk-averse. If you know that a celebrity autobiography is going to sell in shed-loads, then that’s what you’ll publish. If there’s a call for chick-lit (whatever that may be) then when you publish it you’ll make sure that it's easily identifiable across a crowded supermarket. Chick-lit (so called) has been ruling the roost, publishing-wise, for a decade or more, and publishers obviously want their best-selling authors to keep writing within a narrowly restricted range and to present that writing in a narrowly-restricted set of images.

Inevitably comes a backlash. I think it’s known as entropy. Eventually, trends will begin to turn, usually in the opposite direction. The focus on materialism which began in the 80s and resulted, perhaps, in the chick-lit trend, is losing ground. Already, as the article above mentions, there’s a turn away from materialism towards magic, spirituality and the fantastic. Is this a good thing? Yes, in the sense that it may break new ground. No, in the sense that the same thing is likely to happen all over again.

But wouldn't it be wonderful if books could be celebrated for their originality, their freshness and their difference? Wouldn't it be fabulous if genre and gender came second to sheer, brilliant story-telling? A dangerous notion.

Would love to hear your thoughts...

Fact and fiction - telling the story

Working in journalism, I am surrounded by stories daily. Except these stories are real. From murders to political scandals to simple human interest pieces which warm your heart, I tend to use these as fodder for my books. Throw my own personal experiences of every day issues into the mix and voila – here we have…a novel. I have to confess that I base the majority of my novels on high profile incidents, except I twist the stories and make them into my own pieces of fiction. Very often the inspiration can arise from one simple incident buried within a news story – one family’s struggle to come to terms with the death of a loved one for example.

Even if you don’t work in journalism, it’s easy enough to pluck an item from the newspaper or even a piece of gossip from OK magazine, or that hellish place, Netmums (where you’ll find a rant about Little Johnny’s dad) and make it your own. If you’re stuck for inspiration and need to get into first gear, open the newspaper, turn on the television or look out the window and work with what you see in front of you. Heck, even now that it’s X-factor season, listen to what some of the most inspirational and quirky contestants have to say about their lives and develop your characters from there. You’d be surprised at what you come up with. Better still, eavesdrop on a chat in a coffee shop – after all, aren’t most ping-pong conversations about other people, especially those generated by groups of women?

A lot of the novels I love have been inspired by real life events, for example Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann (9/11) and Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (the bombing of Nagasaki). Those books that use an historical event as a backdrop, I find, are more engaging. I feel I can identify with the characters, as if I had lived through the tragedies myself. But that’s just a personal preference. Wasn’t there a whole flurry of novels following the events of September 11, 2001, many of which were based on single incidents within this whole tragedy? Falling Man by Don Delilo springs to mind. And they still keep on coming, years after the events have occurred. I’m keen to read The Submission by Amy Waldman, which deals with the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The book follows a jury as they select a fitting memorial to the victims, the architect being an American Muslim.

One could argue that most books are based on real life events not covered by the media, even pink-covered commercial women’s fiction. It’s just that we don’t hear about these events as they are personal to the writer. What events have inspired your book? Are they personal and private, or have you been affected by something you’ve read in the newspaper? Do tell!