Reviews

A writing colleague of mine recently had a mean one star review of her work. She was distraught about this. Yet it was clearly written by someone who had some sort of grudge and she also had a whole heap of four and five star reviews. I’ve had this happen too. The reviewer in my case had written a rival book.  Except it wasn’t even really that – it was a book written on the same topic but for an entirely different readership.  This book, published in 2003, is still in print, and has many good reviews and even letters of praise to the publishers. Even though it hasn’t yet made me into a millionaire.

Positive reviews, then, do not lead necessarily to prosperity. And we tend to focus on the negative – yes, I’m guilty of that too – and ignore the positive. Anyway, maybe the odd malicious one star review can be ignored. Perhaps the bland three star ones are more of a worry. And even then … perhaps we need to get real.

Sacred Routines

The priority

I have few problems with self-discipline as a writer. Even when I feel reluctant I can write. I can pluck ideas and content from the air and turn them into something readable. As I define myself first and foremost as a writer, I try to make the first thing I do every day my writing. Well, maybe after a quick look at Twitter.

I actually don’t feel right if I don’t. My aim is to work for two hours and write 2,000 words or review 3,000 – 10,000 – or some carefully calculated combination of the three. I don’t always make it and so I also write at weekends and whilst on holiday. I’ve not quite caught up. 

Breaking the mould?

A recent rejection

I’ve just had four short stories rejected. Well, sort of rejected. They came back with a lot of editorial comment, which is always something to take note of. So after the initial “they just don’t get it, do they? For goodness sake, are they expecting me to produce yet another clone? And they’ve got a typo in one of the titles – a typo not of my making” –type reaction, I calmed down and took note. Whatever I might think, this publisher is not going to publish these stories as they are now.  

Some thoughts on books

Books at an early age

My father was the youngest of nine siblings and we lived with my grandmother. There were nearly always cousins in the house and all older than me. At one point they could read and I couldn’t. Reading seemed to involve staring at the page for a long time. So, I would stare at my pages for a long time and tell myself the story the pictures suggested. Many of the books I knew very well and even knew the words in them, though I couldn’t read them. Later the symbols began to mean something.  

My ambitions as a writer

Living the dream now

I graduated in my MA in Writing for Children in 2000. A year before I graduated I gave up a job as a Head of Modern Languages in a secondary school to spend more time on my writing. I immediately took on a temporary contract and for a while there seemed little change though I did have more time in the evenings and at the weekends for my own work: I managed to confine my school work to term-time, 8.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Monday to Friday.

Gradually I took on more individual tuition and less work in schools.

Just six weeks after I graduated I had ten, yet that’s right, ten proposals for educational books accepted. That kept me occupied for a while. I still get royalties from some of those books now.

I’d dreamt up to that point of having that sort of free-lance life – a combination of teaching and writing and that is what I got.

I extended the dream: I wanted to be respected enough as a writer to be invited to talk to university students about my work. An earlier dream had been to be a university lecturer. Now I am a university lecturer, much of my work consisting of talking about writing and it is okay to write on my employer’s time. There is no life / work boundary. In this case that is a good thing. And hand on heart I can say I make my living from writing though the fiction itself does not bring in enough to live on – yet.

The dream now

I’m still waiting for that break-through novel. I’m not sure that it’s the one I’m trying to sell at the moment, nor even the one I’m writing now, or the one planned for after that – even though as always the current one is an improvement on the one before. They are all of course part of the process.

It isn’t about block-busting best-sellers for me, though I’m sure if that happened I’d find a way of using the money. I want to write something of the quality of David Almond’s Skellig, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials BUT hope that when I do that won’t be the endgame. Sometimes it can be hard to follow your own good act. Flash fiction is also becoming important to me and that may successfully follow half a dozen high quality novels.  

As an academic I’d like some David Lodge-type recognition. Ah, shall I also in retirement slip into the theatre at the last moment to watch an adaption of one of my novels? David Lodge sat almost right next to us at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton recently.

Keeping the wish-list simple

We fail to fulfil our dreams when we are not clear about our goals. I’ve decided to keep my wish-list very simple: I have just three wishes. All other good things follow naturally. What I’ve described above is the second part. I’ll gladly tell you about the other two in another context. I can also say that number one and three are getting there rapidly. I therefore assume that this goal is on its way to being fulfilled – all the more exciting because I can’t quite see it. It will take me by surprise one day. My task now, though, is to keep on writing.    

   

When is a writer not a writer? When he or she does not write.

But is this really true?

I have a day job that is very much writing related so I am very lucky and usually I can find time to do a couple of hours’ work. I prefer to do it first thing. It isn’t just a matter of time. It’s also a matter of brain space.

However, at the moment, it’s virtually impossible. At work we’re moving office, getting used to a new School, on a staff development week and getting groups ready for teaching at a time when we have lost several staff and although we have a few new ones and some temporary, hourly-paid ones, it isn’t quite the same as working with experienced colleagues who are very familiar with what we do.

I’m managing a little writing in the evening, but feel very tired and not all that inspired. Last night I managed twenty minutes at 8.40. But actually, it doesn’t matter how I feel. The writing still worked. I did manage one whole scene and I did find something new to add to the plot. The writing seemed fine even though it had been a strain.

Anyway, where do these sudden new ideas come from?     

I’m going to be very pragmatic and say they’re probably rolling around in the subconscious while our conscious mind is doing something else. It’s possible that it is even important to have that time. It’s a time when the mind can turn over the pebbles, looking for the one that is the best fit.   

What the Dickens? Some thoughts about the great man’s writing

My admiration

I love Boz. I really do. The proof? As a writer, sure, I want to be as well-known as him. But I also want to write stories that people love as much as they love his. For my sixtieth birthday I asked for the complete works of Dickens. I got them – all loaded onto a Kindle. I now make a point of rereading one - it is mainly rereading – every Christmas and every summer. This summer was The Old Curiosity Shop. Even though I couldn’t completely silence the hacking critical voice of the Creative Writing teacher I actually enjoyed this more than some modern novels I read.

I once read that when Dickens was established as a writer he would spend from eight until two writing. Then he would walk along the shore for three hours. He would spend a couple of hours in a pub from five to seven, chatting to the locals. Then he would dine, often at the homes of others or at his own, with invited guests. I could live with a routine like that. But these days is it rather the gym, Facebook and Twitter, and occasional dinners or other social gatherings with writing friends.     

Apparently also, he would act out the gestures and words of his characters in front of his mirror. I used to find that odd and a sign of his eccentricity. Now, though, I do it myself.

But. And the “but” or the “buts” are quite considerable.

A narrative problem

The Old Curiosity Shop starts off with a fictionalised author meeting Little Nell who is lost. This author-character also poses a mystery which is never quite solved. He likes to walk at night. Well so does Nell’s grandfather but we soon find out why: he is trying to win a fortune for Nell by gambling. We are not so sure about the stranger. The mystery is intriguing and this creates a good introduction to the main characters. But it isn’t going to work unless the narrator is a key figure too. He clearly isn’t. If Boz were a student in my creative writing group I would have advised against this. Possibly he realises his error; he decides to allow the characters to tell their own story and switches to a third person narrative. And maybe we need to remember that word processors were not available then.  

Characters large than life

The BBC’s The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff may seem to mock but I think it laughs with Dickens not at him. Monty Python, Mr Bean and Blackadder may appear to be inventions of the 20^th and the 21^st centuries but actually Dickens was way ahead of them. Look at all those characters whose names suit them so much: Noddy Boffin, Sally Brass, Bumble, Louisa Chick, Chuzzlewit, Bob Cratchit, Dedlock, Fezziwig, Flintwinch, Uriah Heep, Krook, Nubbles, Quilp,  Smallweed,  Snodgrass, Squeers, Steerforth, Dick Swiveller, Polly Toodle. Their names and their behaviours match. They amuse us and may even make Bean and co. seem rather tame. Dickens is most enjoyable when we understand his irony. That he also maintains the natural and rounded characters is genius.

Dei ex machinae and other dirty tricks

But here’s another problem. Come on, Boz. There are just too many lucky coincidences. Nell and her grandfather just happen to bump into the school master who had been so kind to him. There is a job vacancy for Nell just at the time she arrives at the village with the schoolmaster and her grandfather. Swiveller inherits a huge amount of money just in time.

I won’t tolerate this sort of plotting in my students’ work, I avoid it myself and I and several other creative writing academics condemn Dan Brown for doing it.

Yet here it seems to work. Dickens almost has the pantomime in his stories and a little of the fairy-tale. Is this even where his greatness lies? And perhaps precisely so because he combines it with giving the reader a sense of real life through his detailed descriptions and having key characters who are rounded and believable?

Dickens as popular fiction

Now English Literature students in higher education study his work. However, his novels were considered to be popular fiction at the time he wrote them. Indeed, Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women admits to sneaking off to read a book that she thought wasn’t quite as good as some of the others a particular author had produced. She had to read in secret because this type of novel wasn’t quite approved of in her home. Which novel was it? Dombey and Son!

Despite all of this or maybe because of it, Dickens remains a very fine storyteller and a great creator of memorable characters.