A little link love...

Because I am easily distracted from my key task and I care about you all so much here are some juicy links to keep you going. Thanks to Dylan Horrocks and Maureen Crisp for alerting me to this wonderful piece by the brilliant Ursula Le Guin (I am a lifetime fan of her Wizard of Earthsea books) on the lit versus genre fiction debate. As Ms Le Guin so wisely says, no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.


And this post by author Emma Darwin neatly explains why breaking the writing rules (even when other successful writers seem to get away with it) is still a bad idea.


Okay back to the grindstone...

There is something behind the wall, banging...

The weather here is awful at the moment. I do not mind the rain or the cold but when either is incessant I go a little barking mad. Having children exacerbates the problem, especially sporty children with school uniforms. People will soon start to talk about my kids repeatedly turning up in stinky and/or muddy things. I have a dryer but everything that goes in the dryer has a shortened life. All that tumbling would wear me out too. And uniforms for school or sports are expensive so i do not put them in the dryer...as much as I want to...as much as my hand inches along, creeping closer to the dryer door, itching to press the 'on' button, desperate to be free of the damp of wet clothes hanging on the clothes horse and the dehumidifier that runs day and night. And the wind makes things bang...

There is something behind the wall, banging. There is a high wind buffeting the house. A storm. But I do not think the two are related. The banging in the wall has a rhythm all its own. I wonder who it is. Trying to get in. I wonder what they want with me. I wonder if they know.

In the Weekend Herald's Canvas Magazine (Sat. May 7) there was a lovely article on Michael Morpurgo by Hermione Holby. I have not read anything of his - I read a lot and there are a lot of good books out there, so I refuse to feel bad about this - I am making my way towards his books I am sure. But I love him irrespective of his books, for his comments on literature and children's books.

Morpurgo himself was not a great reader as a child. He came from a literary family and explains that, "literature with the big 'L' was thrust down my throat from a certain age - as it is thrust down many kids' throats.

"I still, to some extent, rebel against that," he says, "because at the heart of every great work of literature, in my view, is a great story. I think at our peril we make literature this rather elite thing. Rather sadly we think of storytelling as writing for young people, and the number of times I've read comments on this play [War Horse] like 'what is remarkable is that it comes only from a children's book'. It reflects the way many people feel still about children's literature. We don't have respect for youth any more than we do for age. I mean the word 'childish' itself," he goes on, "it's not exactly a compliment. And yet if you lose the heart of yourself, if you lose the child in yourself you lose your soul."

Is it impossible to not be a snob?

I have to confess...I too am a writery snob. After lambasting literary snobbery in a recent blog post I have become conscious that I too have been guilty of this transgression. If you are a reader but not a writer of books it is a simple story. You go and buy the books you like and you read them and unless you are a reviewer or a book club devotee you don't have to justify your reading habits to anybody. However if you are a writer, your view on books is no longer so clear cut. Everything now becomes relative. The bottom line is how many books will be sold. If you sell a lot then you will be odds on favourite to be published again and this is understandable as publishers cannot stay in business if they do not sell enough of their product. If you do not sell many books you must hope for some other virtue to be recognized to raise your cache and make your future books desirable. And here writers are pitted against each other for their share of book sales and recognition. Is a good book a book lots of people choose to buy? A book that wins awards? A book that makes a reader cry? A book with a rousing plot, hang the preponderence of adverbs? A book with a main character that has you swooning or determining to be a better person yourself, forget about the plot holes? A book that makes a reader happy? A book that teaches the reader something or is full of useful information? Should books be literary/commercial/romantic/action/have vampires/be entirely in Haiku? My favourite books to read are those with smart plots, engaging characters, clever use of words and a great sense of satisfaction on conclusion. But must this response be the one other readers must have? I strive to write the best prose I can. I try and make my characters ones a reader will care about and place them in a plot that will make the reader turn the page. I like to add humour and make the story emotionally engaging. Where does this put my writing on the literary totem pole. Do I need to climb over some other story to get higher up? The sad situation is that there are a finite number of publishing opportunities. There are plenty of good stories that never see the light of day in book form, plenty of masterpieces that languish alongside a 'bloody good read' that heads out of the shop in droves. It is hard work not to compare my writing to someone else's. I want my books to do well so the publisher might choose to publish more of my books in the future. I need my books to sell well and/ or win recognition in some way. I do my best to not be a snob but as hard as I try I feel like this business makes it impossible to avoid it completely.

Update
I read this today in a review by Maggie Rainey Smith on Beattie's Book Blog - "...all writers to some extent need courage, bravado and a decent dose of vanity just to send their manuscript to a publisher." We must, by necessity, think our work is going to be good enough to be published, and therefore better than others on the slush pile. However it is never right to dismiss a genre as automatically inferior, and to demand that your genre/style/category is automatically superior. That's just rude.