The title of this blog is a conclusion I've long been drawing, but it seems particularly topical today, when looking on the BBC news website, the announcement of Cheryl Cole's separation from master swordsman husband Ashley makes it as the third most important headline. It's also the most viewed headline at the moment.
One of my favourite stories from my brief writing career is that of the agent who read my whole book, then the rewrite he requested, and concluded that unless I won Big Brother or scored a winning goal for England then there was little hope that he would represent me. Celebrity books have long been trouncing any other genre in the bestsellers' list, with only the books of a popular vampire film and the customary Dan Brown and Harry Potter offerings making any sort of dent.
It's what we're up against in times when girls grow up wanting to be WAGs for a living, and the only way to forge a pop career is to cry on television sixteen times on the road to yet another reality expedition. Getting cheated on is also good fodder - having exhausted the terminally ill with the Jade Goody horror show, now it's all about getting to the heart of an affair and taking a side. We live in a country where Jordan and Peter Andre split up, and the public express their views on the matter by giving him number one albums and making her eat a plethora of animal testicles on national television.
Tiger Woods is now of public interest not for being an amazing golfer, but for putting his dick into a string of women. He had to hold a press conference to publicly apologise for cheating on his wife. WHY? Surely he needs to apologise in private and get on with his life, without having to give the public what they so dearly want.
We're at a stage where this sort of information has been legally declared as the public's right to know. Where sanctimonious wenches like Carol Malone and Lorraine Kelly can pass opinion on something that's probably hurting innocent people, as well as the celebrity perpertrator at the same time. I'm sure if I'd been cheated on, I wouldn't like to become tabloid fodder by proxy.
Why do people care so much? What is it that's so enticing about the little melodrama's of celebrity life that make people so captivated? Why is it that Julian Clary can 'write' a novel and get published without so much of a thought, but it remains a struggle for many lesser-known but much better authors? Why do we need a star studded song to make people donate to charity? We're meant to be intelligent human beings, but we're clearly going wrong somewhere. This stuff takes people's attentions away from what's important in the world, which perhaps is part of the point if you subscribe to the '1984 is prophetic' school of thinking.
The BBC puts it as top news because it is top news to a lot of people - it's more relevant than Afghanistan, the general election and the Iraq enquiry combined. It means more to people than a car bomb in Northern Ireland. Vultures, I swear.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Sunday, 14 February 2010
How did writers distract themselves before Facebook?
If someone had told me six months ago that I'd have my very own Mafia, well they would have been completely misguided. If someone had told me that I'd have a hypothetical Mafia that essentially involved me pressing buttons and watching a tiny bar crawl along a screen then they would have had some pretty good predictive skills.
Mafia Wars is currently my favourite distraction, brought to me in association with Facebook - the ultimate waste of time. The worst thing about it is that I engage with this application in the knowledge of how futile it is, like some low rent World of Warcraft, minus the gameplay and interaction that I presume goes with the game (based on one episode of South Park). For those unitiated (I like that I speak as if people read this - as if I'd told people that this blog exists and sent them to read it. Actually, I'll post a link to this on Facebook - so hello to the one person who actually clicked on the link), Mafia Wars is one of many games on Facebook that involves you building up an empire of some sort by completing tasks by accumulating energy points and clicking buttons The only skill you need is time. Time gives you more energy, which means you can press more buttons, which unlocks new screens where you can press more buttons. You can fight people as well, which also gives you points, which means you move onto another level where you get a full energy refill and CAN CLICK MORE BUTTONS!
My excuse for this was the end of my first year of the PhD I had a continuation report to write, which was really fucking hard to do, and such a laborious task requires a break - which in Jim Stripe parlance means going on Facebook and wasting time The alternative Facebook task would be to become a fan of every single mindless idiosyncracy of humanity (for example, 'checking your sent messages after a night out and dying inside,' 'I hate you because your shoes are from Burtons Menswear,' and 'Sniffing your finger on sly when you've fingered a girl.' I've made all of these up, but it's possible that all three exist), so I guess the button clicking is a step up from that. Several of my 'friends' (ie, acquaintances that have sent requests and then not even said hello. I'm sorry, I'm too polite to decline people that I've vaguely known, whilst also being not dramatic enough to have frequent friend culls) have signed up as fans of 'getting wrecked.' Brilliant - you like to get hammered - thanks for celebrating the fact in a way I've not witnessed since the first week of sixth form.
After dealing with the PhD (for the first year at least), I needed to finish writing the book - and again I get distracted when I can't think of the right sentence or where the story goes - and my instinctive action is to go online, go to Facebook and check on my Mafia - which always takes longer than I hoped Yep, it's more pointless than a decade of Loose Women, but I still do it. Before that it was Facebook Scrabble. A few years ago it was internet forums, and more recently trawling Myspace for bands. But before all of this - how did writers procrastinate? Not just the writers, really - there are plenty of people out there with things to do. Perhaps it was E-bay, or Sickipedia (definitely not a futile past-time), or maybe it was DOING SOMETHING USEFUL.
For fellow Facebook users, it's even more annoying because I bombard my wall with a plethora of requests for energy packs and ebony cigars, or for assistant in taking out the Republican Guard in Cuba. It all sounds very engaging and thrill-a-minute, but just take the time to add the application and see what it's all about. It's about nothing.
Okay, so it's not announcing how bored I am, or pissed off with a certain someone via status updates, or tagging me in photos from nights out before I've even woken up the next morning - but it's still using Facebook to waste time Before, perhaps people did this in front of the television, but we've all gravitated to Facebook. As a writer who wants people to read hundreds of thousands of my words at a time, I should be encouraging people to step away from their laptops and do something more productive Instead, I am - in my own way - as bad as about half of this country.
And we're all getting rather bad aren't we? We share the tiniest details of our lives with as many people as possible, put out statuses that will generate a bit of attention/sympathy and join groups that tell the world we want to beat cancer and the like - as if that's something that really needs to be stated (OK, I don't do any of this - but about half my 'friends' do). We are now in touch with more people from our collective pasts than ever before, and without actually communicating with them at all, we are privy to a series of crushingly dull insights into the day-to-day events and non-happenings of people we barely care about. How did it come to this? I preferred it when the internet was for geeks, loners and perverts.
I need to tell myself to hoover a room instead of going for that instinctive mouse movement that gets to my Mafia Or at least find a more worthwhile thing to do (like writing a blog?). What I fail to understand is why I wittingly continue to play this stupid button pressing game, in spite of my own common sense Admittedly I don't have the full set of farms, vampires, rollercoasters and cafes that could basically fill up a life with button pressing, but at the same time people do the same sort of shit every day in call centres and call it a terrible way to live. How did admin become the new fun?
Mafia Wars is currently my favourite distraction, brought to me in association with Facebook - the ultimate waste of time. The worst thing about it is that I engage with this application in the knowledge of how futile it is, like some low rent World of Warcraft, minus the gameplay and interaction that I presume goes with the game (based on one episode of South Park). For those unitiated (I like that I speak as if people read this - as if I'd told people that this blog exists and sent them to read it. Actually, I'll post a link to this on Facebook - so hello to the one person who actually clicked on the link), Mafia Wars is one of many games on Facebook that involves you building up an empire of some sort by completing tasks by accumulating energy points and clicking buttons The only skill you need is time. Time gives you more energy, which means you can press more buttons, which unlocks new screens where you can press more buttons. You can fight people as well, which also gives you points, which means you move onto another level where you get a full energy refill and CAN CLICK MORE BUTTONS!
My excuse for this was the end of my first year of the PhD I had a continuation report to write, which was really fucking hard to do, and such a laborious task requires a break - which in Jim Stripe parlance means going on Facebook and wasting time The alternative Facebook task would be to become a fan of every single mindless idiosyncracy of humanity (for example, 'checking your sent messages after a night out and dying inside,' 'I hate you because your shoes are from Burtons Menswear,' and 'Sniffing your finger on sly when you've fingered a girl.' I've made all of these up, but it's possible that all three exist), so I guess the button clicking is a step up from that. Several of my 'friends' (ie, acquaintances that have sent requests and then not even said hello. I'm sorry, I'm too polite to decline people that I've vaguely known, whilst also being not dramatic enough to have frequent friend culls) have signed up as fans of 'getting wrecked.' Brilliant - you like to get hammered - thanks for celebrating the fact in a way I've not witnessed since the first week of sixth form.
After dealing with the PhD (for the first year at least), I needed to finish writing the book - and again I get distracted when I can't think of the right sentence or where the story goes - and my instinctive action is to go online, go to Facebook and check on my Mafia - which always takes longer than I hoped Yep, it's more pointless than a decade of Loose Women, but I still do it. Before that it was Facebook Scrabble. A few years ago it was internet forums, and more recently trawling Myspace for bands. But before all of this - how did writers procrastinate? Not just the writers, really - there are plenty of people out there with things to do. Perhaps it was E-bay, or Sickipedia (definitely not a futile past-time), or maybe it was DOING SOMETHING USEFUL.
For fellow Facebook users, it's even more annoying because I bombard my wall with a plethora of requests for energy packs and ebony cigars, or for assistant in taking out the Republican Guard in Cuba. It all sounds very engaging and thrill-a-minute, but just take the time to add the application and see what it's all about. It's about nothing.
Okay, so it's not announcing how bored I am, or pissed off with a certain someone via status updates, or tagging me in photos from nights out before I've even woken up the next morning - but it's still using Facebook to waste time Before, perhaps people did this in front of the television, but we've all gravitated to Facebook. As a writer who wants people to read hundreds of thousands of my words at a time, I should be encouraging people to step away from their laptops and do something more productive Instead, I am - in my own way - as bad as about half of this country.
And we're all getting rather bad aren't we? We share the tiniest details of our lives with as many people as possible, put out statuses that will generate a bit of attention/sympathy and join groups that tell the world we want to beat cancer and the like - as if that's something that really needs to be stated (OK, I don't do any of this - but about half my 'friends' do). We are now in touch with more people from our collective pasts than ever before, and without actually communicating with them at all, we are privy to a series of crushingly dull insights into the day-to-day events and non-happenings of people we barely care about. How did it come to this? I preferred it when the internet was for geeks, loners and perverts.
I need to tell myself to hoover a room instead of going for that instinctive mouse movement that gets to my Mafia Or at least find a more worthwhile thing to do (like writing a blog?). What I fail to understand is why I wittingly continue to play this stupid button pressing game, in spite of my own common sense Admittedly I don't have the full set of farms, vampires, rollercoasters and cafes that could basically fill up a life with button pressing, but at the same time people do the same sort of shit every day in call centres and call it a terrible way to live. How did admin become the new fun?
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Focus?
A new approach, then.
Since I started writing, I've tried to do as much of it as possible in as many ways as possible. When I get a novel down to the editing stage, I tend to start a collaborative writing project of some sort. In the past this has yielded The Industry of Guilt - a great selection of short stories from the fine people lurking on Myspace (I wonder if kids of the future will ask, "Were you old enough to have a Myspace?") - and there was Bad Marmalade as well, which was a fair old success until the PhD came along and stole a load of my time.
For the past two and a half years I've written reviews for a music website called Whisperin and Hollerin. As a music lover of the highest order, the non-payment was more than made up for by free CDs and gigs, and innumerable new favourite bands that came about as a result. But you can get to a point where you're trying to do too much and not really homing in on one thing.
Getting my novels published is my real goal in life, which is something I've known for a long time. The PhD is goal number two. Both of these are very time consuming, and somewhere down the line I've stopped going out and having good fun. I've had the opportunity to reflect on stuff recently, and eventually came to the the tough decision to drop something. I did this with Bad Marmalade last year, and it worked for a while. But this time - with this book - I need to put in the concerted effort to somehow make it the success I want it to be. So the reviewing has gone.
I hate quitting things like that. It was a job I enjoyed and got a lot out of it, but I don't want to be a music journalist. I like being a music fan and I like listening to something without trying to think of 400 hopefully engaging words to describe it. I can cope with paying for my CDs and gigs, especially now I have more time to go to them.
But I can see myself scouting around for new projects already. I need the creative outlet that writing to agents and publishers doesn't really offer you. I'm going to need more than entering writing competitions and hoping for the best. I'm already planning a new novel in my head - it somehow doesn't stop. For now, though, I am going to try and do all the self-promotion rubbish, which is the element I like the least.
Getting to the end of the first edit of the book, then I'm sending it out to friends for some lengthy criticism (I hope), and in theory the shedding of more words (a process that seems to be getting a bit easier). I've also taken to reading long books to prove to myself that the world is capable of enjoying an epic story. It's a shame they all seem to be by established authors - this may be the brick wall I face.
On the other hand, the Deal or No Deal application is now complete - several thousand pounds from that experience and I'm setting up my own publishing company.
Since I started writing, I've tried to do as much of it as possible in as many ways as possible. When I get a novel down to the editing stage, I tend to start a collaborative writing project of some sort. In the past this has yielded The Industry of Guilt - a great selection of short stories from the fine people lurking on Myspace (I wonder if kids of the future will ask, "Were you old enough to have a Myspace?") - and there was Bad Marmalade as well, which was a fair old success until the PhD came along and stole a load of my time.
For the past two and a half years I've written reviews for a music website called Whisperin and Hollerin. As a music lover of the highest order, the non-payment was more than made up for by free CDs and gigs, and innumerable new favourite bands that came about as a result. But you can get to a point where you're trying to do too much and not really homing in on one thing.
Getting my novels published is my real goal in life, which is something I've known for a long time. The PhD is goal number two. Both of these are very time consuming, and somewhere down the line I've stopped going out and having good fun. I've had the opportunity to reflect on stuff recently, and eventually came to the the tough decision to drop something. I did this with Bad Marmalade last year, and it worked for a while. But this time - with this book - I need to put in the concerted effort to somehow make it the success I want it to be. So the reviewing has gone.
I hate quitting things like that. It was a job I enjoyed and got a lot out of it, but I don't want to be a music journalist. I like being a music fan and I like listening to something without trying to think of 400 hopefully engaging words to describe it. I can cope with paying for my CDs and gigs, especially now I have more time to go to them.
But I can see myself scouting around for new projects already. I need the creative outlet that writing to agents and publishers doesn't really offer you. I'm going to need more than entering writing competitions and hoping for the best. I'm already planning a new novel in my head - it somehow doesn't stop. For now, though, I am going to try and do all the self-promotion rubbish, which is the element I like the least.
Getting to the end of the first edit of the book, then I'm sending it out to friends for some lengthy criticism (I hope), and in theory the shedding of more words (a process that seems to be getting a bit easier). I've also taken to reading long books to prove to myself that the world is capable of enjoying an epic story. It's a shame they all seem to be by established authors - this may be the brick wall I face.
On the other hand, the Deal or No Deal application is now complete - several thousand pounds from that experience and I'm setting up my own publishing company.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Cut it out
After two years of writing my first draft of ‘The Almost Lizard,’ it was a huge relief to get the end of the book, despite knowing the massive job that was to follow. There was the initial pleasure of seeing the whole thing printed out in over 300 pages of Microsoft Word glory, creating a non-transportable slab of my work. A product, almost.
My biggest fear whilst writing it was how long it was turning out to be. I’d always planned to write a big story. Back when I was in the planning stage I adorned my bedroom walls with the plot – a general chronology, plus sheets on each character and their development, important dates for continuity and neat little lines that I wanted to incorporate into the story somewhere.
My protagonist is called Dan/Daniel/Danny (depending on which part of his life you are reading at that time), and the book is sectioned accordingly. I completed my wall sheets shortly before starting at a new job, where I made a friend in training called Dan. After work drinks carried on to my house, where (him being a muso) a traditional exchange of CD collections took place. I could only have known him for two weeks and he admitted afterwards to being a little concerned at the rather stalkerish looking sheets on my bedroom wall, emblazoned with his name (and apparently some fairly accurate statements about his life) and various nefarious incidents in a spider-diagram formation. Give him his due, he politely didn’t mention it, but I remember cringing after he’d left. We’ve discussed it since and he definitely found it a little bit sinister, so I’m relieved that I was able to prove that the stalker wallpaper pre-dated the time that I met him.
But the point is that it was a carefully planned novel and I always knew it was going to be lengthy. Inspired by the sorts of elaborate stories put together by John Irving, I wanted to tell a life story (albeit a life-story of a life cut short). Then I decided it was going to be an autobiography, and then all of the elements fell into place. I compiled all my files at the end and was relieved that the sum total was only 188,000 words. Methodical as ever, though, I’d missed one file which I discovered only when I printed the ‘complete’ first draft, which cranked the total up to 225,000 words.
Who is going to be interested in 225,000 words from an unpublished author?
The aim had always been to reduce it to a more agent-accessible 150,000 words, and the hacking process should hopefully get rid of some of the shite. I’m half way through now and I’d estimate about 20,000 words have fallen by the wayside. I was shocked to find that there was little padding in the book, though. I’d anticipated some late night ramblings that could have been culled, but it actually seems I’ve been pretty direct in telling the story, which just happens to be too long.
And this is the part that sucks. To appeal to the writing industry, you need to have something compact and marketable. You can’t go steaming out there with some epic novel when no-one knows who you are and won’t invest in you – apparently. Steve Toltz is a nice current exception to the rule, and there are plenty of other people out there writing the lengthy novels (Norman Mailer & Don DeLillo, for example) and doing very well with it.
The issue is of risk, though. I was once told by an agent that although my writing was good, I was unmarketable unless I’d won Big Brother or scored a winning goal for England. And that was with a novel that was on 112,000 words.
Which makes me think that we need to take things into our own hands, seeking similar reformations that have taken the music industry by storm. As writers, should we be going it alone, or in small packs, and doing it ourselves? Should we be getting ourselves published and organising readings, and bombarding people with reasons why they should read our work?
There’s a lot to be said for the traditional route – for approaching an agent for the validation that your work is good, or a publisher if you’re feeling a bit more direct. It suggests that you’ve been through a process and people can see the appeal in what you do. But that doesn’t mean they’re always right, or that we’re asking the right people. The issue with self-publishing is that some writers with X Factor numpty levels of delusion about their abilities can find their way onto bookshelves without the need for so much as a first edit. But if you think you’re good, and others (not just your immediate family and friends) can see that you have something, then perhaps it time to start thinking about challenging the way things are.
So if the agents and publishers won’t take risks, then the writers need to. That’s my logic. In the next few months I am working on ways to create a buzz around myself and my work. It may work, or it will (most likely) just get lost in the tides of other failed self-promotion exercises that take place in real-life and online every single day. The point is, should I really try and lose 75,000 words from a story when it’s only to appease the conventions attached to first time authors?
A solid edit is essential. A fairly objective reading of what you’ve done without being too precious is a must if you’re going to write something worth reading. Several edits, really. But if after all of that, the story just turns out to be a long story – there should be nothing wrong with that either.
After this edit I’m sending it to people, mainly with the question – what can I lose from this? I can hopefully engage some useful criticism from writing communities (that aren’t the rather odious mutual-back-scratching, time spent online over quality of writing, futile exercise that is Harper Collins’ Authonomy site – more on that another time) and see where that leaves me. I guess if an agent is put off by a lengthy tome then they’re probably not the ones to go for.
Just in case, though, I might get working on a novella.
My biggest fear whilst writing it was how long it was turning out to be. I’d always planned to write a big story. Back when I was in the planning stage I adorned my bedroom walls with the plot – a general chronology, plus sheets on each character and their development, important dates for continuity and neat little lines that I wanted to incorporate into the story somewhere.
My protagonist is called Dan/Daniel/Danny (depending on which part of his life you are reading at that time), and the book is sectioned accordingly. I completed my wall sheets shortly before starting at a new job, where I made a friend in training called Dan. After work drinks carried on to my house, where (him being a muso) a traditional exchange of CD collections took place. I could only have known him for two weeks and he admitted afterwards to being a little concerned at the rather stalkerish looking sheets on my bedroom wall, emblazoned with his name (and apparently some fairly accurate statements about his life) and various nefarious incidents in a spider-diagram formation. Give him his due, he politely didn’t mention it, but I remember cringing after he’d left. We’ve discussed it since and he definitely found it a little bit sinister, so I’m relieved that I was able to prove that the stalker wallpaper pre-dated the time that I met him.
But the point is that it was a carefully planned novel and I always knew it was going to be lengthy. Inspired by the sorts of elaborate stories put together by John Irving, I wanted to tell a life story (albeit a life-story of a life cut short). Then I decided it was going to be an autobiography, and then all of the elements fell into place. I compiled all my files at the end and was relieved that the sum total was only 188,000 words. Methodical as ever, though, I’d missed one file which I discovered only when I printed the ‘complete’ first draft, which cranked the total up to 225,000 words.
Who is going to be interested in 225,000 words from an unpublished author?
The aim had always been to reduce it to a more agent-accessible 150,000 words, and the hacking process should hopefully get rid of some of the shite. I’m half way through now and I’d estimate about 20,000 words have fallen by the wayside. I was shocked to find that there was little padding in the book, though. I’d anticipated some late night ramblings that could have been culled, but it actually seems I’ve been pretty direct in telling the story, which just happens to be too long.
And this is the part that sucks. To appeal to the writing industry, you need to have something compact and marketable. You can’t go steaming out there with some epic novel when no-one knows who you are and won’t invest in you – apparently. Steve Toltz is a nice current exception to the rule, and there are plenty of other people out there writing the lengthy novels (Norman Mailer & Don DeLillo, for example) and doing very well with it.
The issue is of risk, though. I was once told by an agent that although my writing was good, I was unmarketable unless I’d won Big Brother or scored a winning goal for England. And that was with a novel that was on 112,000 words.
Which makes me think that we need to take things into our own hands, seeking similar reformations that have taken the music industry by storm. As writers, should we be going it alone, or in small packs, and doing it ourselves? Should we be getting ourselves published and organising readings, and bombarding people with reasons why they should read our work?
There’s a lot to be said for the traditional route – for approaching an agent for the validation that your work is good, or a publisher if you’re feeling a bit more direct. It suggests that you’ve been through a process and people can see the appeal in what you do. But that doesn’t mean they’re always right, or that we’re asking the right people. The issue with self-publishing is that some writers with X Factor numpty levels of delusion about their abilities can find their way onto bookshelves without the need for so much as a first edit. But if you think you’re good, and others (not just your immediate family and friends) can see that you have something, then perhaps it time to start thinking about challenging the way things are.
So if the agents and publishers won’t take risks, then the writers need to. That’s my logic. In the next few months I am working on ways to create a buzz around myself and my work. It may work, or it will (most likely) just get lost in the tides of other failed self-promotion exercises that take place in real-life and online every single day. The point is, should I really try and lose 75,000 words from a story when it’s only to appease the conventions attached to first time authors?
A solid edit is essential. A fairly objective reading of what you’ve done without being too precious is a must if you’re going to write something worth reading. Several edits, really. But if after all of that, the story just turns out to be a long story – there should be nothing wrong with that either.
After this edit I’m sending it to people, mainly with the question – what can I lose from this? I can hopefully engage some useful criticism from writing communities (that aren’t the rather odious mutual-back-scratching, time spent online over quality of writing, futile exercise that is Harper Collins’ Authonomy site – more on that another time) and see where that leaves me. I guess if an agent is put off by a lengthy tome then they’re probably not the ones to go for.
Just in case, though, I might get working on a novella.
Monday, 11 January 2010
By way of introduction
Hello, no-one.
This is a blog that no-one can know about yet, so let me explain.
I'm a writer from Manchester, UK. This is going to be a place for my writing and my ramblings - from my novels to my short story ideas, right through to the inevitable bitching about not being picked up by an agent. I'm hoping people find their way to reading my stuff, and we'll see how this little experiment progresses. At the moment I have lots of ideas, which I hope will become words sooner rather than later.
I have a novel all written but being rested, and a new one that I'm currently editing. I have some short story ideas that will find their way on here as well. I'm looking for writers, and for readers as well. I'd love to find publishers, but I don't expect them to be here.
You'll be hearing from me, no-one.
This is a blog that no-one can know about yet, so let me explain.
I'm a writer from Manchester, UK. This is going to be a place for my writing and my ramblings - from my novels to my short story ideas, right through to the inevitable bitching about not being picked up by an agent. I'm hoping people find their way to reading my stuff, and we'll see how this little experiment progresses. At the moment I have lots of ideas, which I hope will become words sooner rather than later.
I have a novel all written but being rested, and a new one that I'm currently editing. I have some short story ideas that will find their way on here as well. I'm looking for writers, and for readers as well. I'd love to find publishers, but I don't expect them to be here.
You'll be hearing from me, no-one.
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