A PLACE TO GROW

Writers are like plants. Some are hothouse flowers, delicate and sensitive: put them in a greenhouse and they’ll flourish: but place an orchid in a draught, and it soon topples over. Others are hardy perennials: providing they’re planted as per the instructions on the packet, they’ll keep growing back year after year, even after the toughest of winters. And then there are those tenacious miracle-plants – you know, the ones that can root themselves in the tiniest fissures of rocks, or anywhere where they can extract the smallest particle of nourishment from the air or the sun or the ground. Wherever there’s the whisper of potential, they’ll cling on for dear life.

There’s a discussion on WriteWords at the moment about how ‘cosy’ an atmosphere needs to be to support writing. Can an environment be too understanding and accepting? Do we need the harshness of rejection to grow, in the what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – sense?

Environment is, of course, deeply important to writers. Not just the places we write about in our novels or short stories or poems, but the environments in which we place ourselves. For some, a café table with a latte and a laptop is the ideal environment. For others, a silent study with the door firmly closed and a ream of empty paper.

But I’m not just talking about physical spaces. We writers are sensitive to the invisible energies whispering around us, whether we know it or not: the weathers of our world. That silence at the end of the extract we’ve just read out: is it the silence of disapproval, surprise or realisation? The raised eyebrow, the exchanged glance: what’s being said, really? Is the critique we’re receiving engendering and appropriate, or subliminally cruel and undercutting?

I’m a great fan of the I Ching – the Chinese Book Of Changes. Written poetically and symbolically, it offers often obscure but usually excellent guidance to seekers. One line from its many pages has always remained with me:

Develop an atmosphere in which things can grow.

The environment which most nurtures you as a writer may be very different from the one which nourishes me. The important thing is to be aware of what you, as an individual, need - and to do all you can to cultivate such an environment for yourself. This includes the place you work in; those very personal little rituals that most writers have: the tin of biscuits on the desk, the hot water bottle in the lap, the pictures on the wall, the view from the window. It also includes the people you choose to share your writing with and the places you send your writing into. And, perhaps most importantly of all, there's the atmosphere you develop within yourself towards your writing.

Here's an example gleaned from the Strictly team. After a long bout of block and discouragement, Rod was at his wits end. How could he ever write again? Fortunately, his wise partner suggested to him that he return to the seed of his writing: the enjoyment of it. Since then, he's been using 'enjoyment' as a barometer for his writing activities, and can really see the green shoots of recovery. (Rod will be blogging more about this later on).

We are each unique. And it’s my opinion that an engendering environment – whatever that may be for you – must be found if we are to flourish and grow. As Barbara Sher, author of the wonderful Wishcraft – a free, online book about ‘growing your own best life’ writes:

‘If a seed is given good soil and plenty of water and sun, it doesn’t have to try to unfold…If a seed has to grow with a rock on top of it, or in deep shade, or without enough water, it won’t unfold into a healthy full-sized plant. It will try – hard – because the drive to become what you are meant to be is incredibly powerful. But at best it will become a sort of ghost of what it could be: pale, undersized, drooping…
In the age of ecology, we ourselves are the only creatures we would ever expect to flourish in an environment that does not give us what we need! We wouldn’t order a spider to spin an exquisite web in empty space, or a seed to sprout on a bare desk top… Put us in a nourishing environment, even late in a hard life, and we burst into bloom.’

In the immortal words of Morcambe and Wise: Give me sunshine. Whatever that means to you.

The end is nigh

Honestly, if I hear one more time that the end is nigh, I might kill myself.

I'm serious. I don't know about you lot, but this writer can't move for articles by literary authors or broadsheet columnists ( often both ) declaring that the publishing industry is in the final stages of terminal decline.
Books, they weep, have had their day. Boo Hoo.

I was doing an interview on Monday for a fairly commercial radio station, when this came up. Now how these things usually go, is that sandwiched between the traffic news and Chain Reaction by Dianna Ross, I'm asked, by a DJ who hasn't read any of my books, a. where I get my ideas from and b. is Lilly Valentine based on me.
Everyone knows where they are with this stuff.

But no. On Monday I was asked, in tones last reserved for the death of Princess Di, whether book discounting would ultimately lead to end of creativity as publishers focussed more and more on the big sellers.

Look, I know where he was going. Of course the current tiny profit margins on books mean vast quantities have to be shifted and some of the more serious books are never going to have that broad appeal...but come on, dude, do the lovely listeners care on their way to the office?
What they know is that they can get books cheaply and who am I to deny them that.

When I was a kid I had about twenty paperbacks on a shelf in my bedroom. This was about nineteen more than most of my mates. Books were bloody expensive. A luxury. Is it really for me to suggest we go back to that? Not on bloody national radio it's not.

Then there's the e-reader. Apparently this isn't a smart new gadget, but the destroyer of fiction as we know it.
Writers all over the internet are clutching a copy of their favourite novel to their bosom and declaring their undying love for the very paper it's printed on.
I often wonder if at the advent of the stone tablet some travelling minstrel was telling anyone that would listen that writing stories down was the spawn of the devil. That humankind would no longer need or want stories in this new fangled way.

Now I too, wonder if I'll ever get along with a Kindle, but I'm sharp enough to know that this is because of my AGE. My kids will no doubt embrace it like all the other technology I can't quite get to grips with.
Like most other ten year olds, my children are hardwired to love stories. They read voraciously, everything from Harry Potter to Alex Rider. They insist I read to them every night.
The other day I told them about e-readers and their reaction was simply 'cool'. Loads of books at your finger tips. Good one.

Now I don't want to come across as some sort of Pollyanna. I'm as aware as anyone that times are hard and that the publishing industry is having a tough time. We writers are on the cusp of some big changes.
I guess I just don't see it as necessarily a bad thing.
Humans have spun yarns since the dawn of time and I'm convinced that will continue.
How it will happen, I don't yet know, but I'll be buggered if I'm going to waste energy worrying about it.

To fuck or not to fuck?

Warning: if you find offensive language offensive, please don’t read this post. Not even the title.

Hey, guys, I think I’ve found an aspect of writing that we haven’t already fished to extinction on Strictly Writing. That’s fucking difficult these days; we’ve trawled the whole of it, from dreaming up ideas to polishing your commas. In case it isn’t fucking obvious enough, I’m talking about swearing. Do you mouth it off in your fiction? Only in dialogue or in the narrative too?

For my part, I keep it to the dialogue. Unless my narrative voice were some young rebel or obvious member of the cussing classes, I would clean up the prose. In fact, looking back at my work, there’s almost no profanity to be found. One of my poems, Bloody Marvellous, is a stark exception. It’s odd really as I’m an inveterate foul mouth in speech, even when I’m alone. This morning I dropped a knife plastered with butter on the kitchen floor and automatically let out a quick fuck. Alone in the car yesterday someone pulled across in front of me and I said, ‘Thank you, wanker.’ I didn’t wind down the window and shout, I didn’t leap out and open his door at the lights, I just recited the little prayer at normal volume for my ears only. It’s what we do, isn’t it?

Long before he became a televisual big-shot I went to see Mark Thomas doing stand-up at The Viaduct, down near Ealing Hospital. I still remember his exegesis on the merits of swearing: ‘It is fucking big and it is fucking clever.’ He also pointed out, irrefutably, that some things are impossible to say without swearing: Richard fucking Branson, for example.

There’s definitely an aspect of diminishing returns when it comes down to four letters. If you fucking swear all the fucking time it loses some of its fucking fire-power. Perhaps that’s because the words are all clichés in their own right. And too much licentiousness looks as if you are trying to be cool, or clever, like using long words.

In my first novel, I am not John Nocent, I held off for impact. None of the characters use bad language at any point in the story until John’s house is surrounded by an angry mob who have built a pyre in the street and are now advancing on his front door. In that situation a little profanity seems apt. He could hardly say, ‘Would you all mind just popping along home now?’ I hoped John’s, ‘Fuck off!’ would ring out into the night street.

Even if I don't swear in stories, it’s been bloody pleasant to give myself free rein across the bastard keyboard for this sodding Strictly post. Perhaps I’ll look for a chance to let rip in fiction too. If I do, there’s one word that I might not be able to use. I won’t even utter it in this hallowed place. I’m afraid to do so, and it’s embarrassing to admit that. After all, we’re writers. We don’t believe in censorship, especially not a censorship of vocabulary. The word in question is nothing special. It’s even used in its Spanish form by certain (well-behaved and respectable) Latin American girls to say hello to their mates. It’s just that, in English, it’s the most potent word I know, and whilst it is more popularly employed by males to insult other males, there is something about it that offends against the female.

The last time I remember hearing the word was from the lips of the actor Neil Pearson of Drop the Dead Donkey fame. We were in the bar at the Old Vic Theatre. The curtain had just fallen on the opening night's performance of the appropriately named play, Cloaca, in which he starred. I had taken the opportunity to give the Director, Kevin Spacey, and some of the cast a little gentle feedback. Neil didn’t agree with me and called me the word we are now too polite to mention. It spiced up the evening wonderfully, his delivery of the word being much more memorable than anything that had happened on the stage. It was his best line of the night. Later I felt vindicated when the play was roundly panned by the critics. The dead duck was duly dropped. Kevin Spacey, I have to say was polite and charming, throughout.

There we have it. Proof that even those educated at the same school as Ian McEwan readily hurl at their customers the foulest language they can scrape up. Does that mean I need to include more of it in my fiction? After all, I enjoy it when I read it.

Now I really want to type that word, so I had better stop.

Don't want to be a xxxx.

I typed it and then my little finger leapt diagonally right to the backspace key to remove the smirch from the screen.

So, am I taking bollocks? Please, give me your views on all things vulgar. I await them with lungs on pause. And when you do comment, make sure that your words are suitably couched in obscenity: non expletives will be deleted.

The spell chequer is write, sew their!

Hell oh. I'm Gillian and bye now ewe will no me as won of the Strictly crew. Eye like to think eye am a good speller. Of coarse, we knead to bee good spellers, ewe sea. As authors wee set an eggs ample to others. Perhaps there are sum people who want to bee authors but our not that good at spelling. That's were the pea sea comes in handy. Some people don't give a shirt weather they spell write or knot, butt I do! Four me, it's very imp port tent. I learned too spell when I was at school at the age of for. My teach her said I was a grate speller and I even got won hundred per cent won year.

Eye halve won of those spelling chequers which is help full. Ewe can tell, I hope? Regard less of weather I halve a spell chequer or knot, I no I am a grate speller. Many of the grate righters did knot halve spelling chequers. George Oar Well could spell and he didn't halve a spelling chequer because he lived long a go. Charles Dick Ins new how to spell write. If ewe reed Grate Expectations ewe will bee amazed at how good he is. All sew, there's Emily Braun Tea who probably did knot halve a spell chequer, and Dug Glass Cope Land – he know doubt did though, as he is mode urn.

The knew write hers from the naughties like Nick Cola Bark Her and Kazoo Oh Ishiguro or even Hill Lorry Mantle will halve spelling chequers witch will help them to spell. All there novels, and even Hilary's book Wool Fall where all free from mist aches. They will halve spelling chequers on their comp pewters and eye max.

Eye have been running my hole novel threw it and have realised it's perfect all the weigh threw. There are know wig lee green lines, know mist aches at all – soup her, I thought! This novel, numb bare three, which eye halve stored on my pea sea is grate. I'm well pleased with it and I'm hoping some won some were will want to publish it.

Butt, the spelling chequer can be danger us two. We may think we spell a whirred write butt it is, in fact wrong. Sew, we must be care full when sending are books two agents.

I can knot bare those rejections. I'm board with them. Those callus agents think they no it all. They chews only a few books each year two print - and just think off all that paper they waist, righting reject sean let hers. Plane crazy, huh?

Eye halve taken grate care with this blog two, sew if ewe sea any mist aches please let me no. All the words our spelt write – that I can ass sure ewe. Knot won whirred is out of plaice – can ewe bee leave that?

Let this be a less in to ewe, to poof read care fully!

Take a bough spelling chequer, your the best.

Guest Blog by Jenn Ashworth - Second Novel Syndrome

For the past two and a half years, those three words have been banned not only in my house, but anywhere in my vicinity. That’s how long it took me to whinge about and complete my second novel – Cold Light. I started just as my agent started submitting A Kind of Intimacy to editors and at that time I was full of confidence – thinking that I’d done it once, of course I could do it again. This time it would be much easier, and quicker, and less frightening – because I knew what I was doing.

Insert the sound of hollow laughter here.

It wasn’t quicker, it wasn’t easier and in many ways, although I didn’t take the Donna Tartt route and leave a decade between my debut and follow-up, it was actually more difficult and time-consuming than the first time around. For months I deleted more than I wrote, dismantled the plot and screwed it together again threw the kind of hissy fits that I sneer at when I hear about them from other writers. It was a horrible couple of years.

Exactly like, in fact, writing my first novel.

The cliché of thought around SNS is that the publicity surrounding your first gives you a bit of stage fright. But I’ve been incredibly lucky. There was an initial flurry of reviews, none of which made me swear or cry, and a steady stream of events at festivals, libraries and bookshops, which I quite liked doing, actually. Nothing I could point at and say, ‘there, it’s your fault I can’t write this.’

For me, the problem was in the transition between writing as a hobby, done in the early mornings, late nights and lunch hours at work, and writing as a job – shoes on at nine in the morning, bum in chair, sit yourself down and get on with it no peeking at twitter kind of work. I got an arts council grant, gave up my job as a prison librarian, and got on with it. Except it didn’t happen right away. I struggled to take myself seriously, to take the work seriously, to feel like a real writer. They don’t do it like this, I thought, not in their cardigans with a bag of satsumas in their laps. Real writers aren’t like me. I needed a boss.

I wish there was a trick to sorting that out. I spent some of the grant on mentoring – a difficult, rewarding, demanding process that really helped. Forgetting about money and resigning myself to always being a bit poorer than my Friends With Jobs helped too. Rationing facebook and twitter. Knowing when to give myself a bit of sympathy and when to sneer at my own tantrums and force myself back to the desk. Remembering something I am always telling my students – it’s all right to write a shitty first draft. The magic is in the re-writing.

The most important thing was giving myself permission not to write. The world has enough books – no-one needs something I can’t be arsed writing. If I don’t want to do it, then fine, don’t bother. See if I care. The thought was usually enough to drive me back to my desk for another round. I’m easily manipulated like that.

And I’m done now. I’ve an idea brewing for the third. It’s bound to be easier this time. I’ve done it twice now, haven’t I? This time round, it’s got to be a doddle.

Jenn Ashworth has, as you may have gathered, just finished her second novel. Her first, A Kind of Intimacy, is out with Arcadia. She also writes a blog. www.jennashworth.blogspot.com

What's the point of book signings?

Strictly Come Dancing's Tess Daly has had a tough time lately. First her husband, Vernon Kay (er, right - who?) owned up to some sleazy shenanigans. Now the Daily Mail has jeered at her 'disastrous' writing career. Her book, The Baby Diaries, about life as a new mum, is apparently a flop - because when the Daily Mail looked at Amazon, it ranked a mere 351.

Oh no! 351? And there's me feeling pretty happy if my book's at 351,000. What's worse, according to the Mail, is that Tess did a signing at a Dublin bookshop and there were 'less than (sic) 30 people' there!

While I don't give two hoots about Tess's (or anyone else's) experience of motherhood, I do sympathise with her about this snide coverage of her supposed failure.

Selling 30 books at a signing is brilliant, and the photos show Tess quite rightly smiling. For losers like me, the shops only order about 25 copies in the first place (which is good, because I can say 'I sold out!' and people are more impressed than they really ought to be.) Some authors and publishers are ambivalent about the value of signings because of the time involved for relatively few sales, but the number shifted on the day is only a minor measure of an event's success.

The main benefit of a book signing is the publicity surrounding it - for most of us this is at a

rather more local level than for celeb writers, but is still not to be sneezed at. You can't exactly keep firing off press releases titled 'Book came out last year, author still begging everyone to buy it,' but a release about a specific event has a good chance of attracting interest. Often the papers will not only mention the forthcoming signing but also send a photographer on the day, so you can grin like a gormless hamster from the pages of next week's edition too.

If you live near the venue, you can ask local shops to display posters - all helping to make the cover art familiar to readers next time they see the book. At the signing itself, you can give out bookmarks (see here for instructions on getting them cheap) or postcards with your web address. Only a really miserable sod will refuse a free bookmark. Any of this publicity can lead to someone picking up the book at a later date, and you can be spotted by festival organisers, local reading group members, librarians - anyone who might be in need of a friendly author for an event. My first ever signing resulted in an invitation to speak at a literature festival; the next got me a county reading groups event and a couple of library talks... which meant the library authorities had to buy a few copies, which have been constantly out on loan ever since (yeah, I do check the online library catalogues, I'm that sad.)

A signing is also a great opportunity to meet the booksellers who talk to your potential readers every day. Make a good impression on them (i.e. by being an average nice person – anyone who has ever worked in retail will know that's rare enough) and maybe they'll recommend the book to customers - maybe even put it face-out on the shelf.

Though the Mail's unpleasantness about Tess Daly is all we can expect from the tabloids, I hope she isn't too disheartened. A signing's success isn't down to the number of sales, but to the sometimes surprising opportunities that can result - and perhaps even the negative coverage will bring The Baby Diaries to the attention of people who will appreciate it.

Don’t Give Up the Day Job

There are a few daydreams we writers allow ourselves as we languish in a nice deep, foamy - mostly metaphorical - bath; letting our imaginations roam wild until they start to border on dangerously prune-y. And one of mine has always been that once I get the elusive Agent, Contract, four-book (six figure *) deal I will drop my nice little part-time job like the hot noose around my creative neck I’ve always assumed it… well, just is.

For up ‘til now I’ve always bemoaned the six thirty alarm and the Eight o’clock School drive and then the additional 45 minute slog to my own school (I don’t mean I run it – I’m not the Head or anything, just another cog in the educational wheel). And then having to spend the next four hours trying to make sense of stuff I’m supposed to be doing and getting paid for doing there, whilst I’m actually writing the next scene of my book in my head.
Y'see, I know I have to have the ‘paid’ job and without it I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay bills and eat food or buy paper and ink cartridges and belong to wonderful online writing sites like WriteWords. But all I want to do whilst I’m there is be back  home with my eyes firmly fixed on the screen and my fingers flying like crazy (on a good day) across the keyboard creating a whole Other World.
I’ve been exasperated to the point of distraction at times; that I’m tethered to this ridiculous worker’s treadmill all for the sake of having some paper on which to churn out chapters of the next dream I’m working on so that I can post them off to a handful of carefully selected Agents to then shred on my behalf before they’ve even properly read them.
Because that’s how it feels at times, right?
Of course, I’ve always managed to cheer myself up with the fact that my ‘paid’ job is not without its merits i.e the lovely warm printer which sits happily beside me. And a keyboard and screen. Oh, and the kettle and biscuits are well within reach too. However printer, screen, kettle and chocolate Digestives do not a contented writer make. Very close, granted - but still no cigar.
Lately though, with the enthusiastic responses from the latest wave of Agent-subbing, I’ve found this part of my daydream morphing into something strangely different. And I've let myself get sucked further into my 'dream'.  I even waltzed down one of the corridors the other day chanting (under my breath of course) *"I have an Agent".  I have an Agent" - just to see what it would feel like.  But I was unprepared for the feelings this incantation induced.
No longer do I see myself running like a hairy banshee into the main hall during full school assembly with a cry of “That’s it, I’m published – I’m OUTTA HERE!” Then setting of all the fire alarms, turning on all the Bunsen burners and blocking the year 8 loos with reams of sugar paper. Oh no, I seem to somehow have risen above all that nonsense (although now I read that back, it does look like fun). Because strangely enough – and even though I know that most published authors still need to keep the day job going to support their literary urges, I would miss the social interaction. The happy little faces of the quirky assortment of people I work with. Their eager enquiries into how my writing endeavours are going; their enthusiasm at my excitement of being asked for chapters and their continued support of this Other Job I have when I get home from the first.
And anyway – whether they know it or not – they are also the source of some of the best material that one day may lead to that other … *Pine/Hollywood-based dream!

* These ideas are brought to you as part of my subliminal visualisation technique!