I came across this little gem in the Times about the troubles at PFD literary agency late last year.
The part I found most interesting is this stinging but eloquently honest assessment of the state of affairs in publishing today.
The literary elite, increasingly depressed by publishing’s love affair with the mass market, its desertion of the mid-list, the relinquishing of their power by publishers to the booksellers, identified in this move a plan to further “streamline” this still vaguely eccentric and mercurial industry into a profit-driven conveyor belt in which authors and actors would be expected to become all-singing, all-dancing “products”. A world in which glamour models can dominate the bestseller lists with autobiographies that they happily admit to not having written. A world in which the oversixties, that is to say more than a handful of PFD’s leading agents, would be considered well past their sell-by dates and where authors such as Louis de Bernieres, who became widely read only with the publication of his fifth book, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, would, in these more marketing-orientated days, never have retained the complete confidence of his publishers unless by happy chance he had been discovered by Richard and Judy. The intellectuals hate to admit it, but this is what a meritocratic, market-driven landscape looks like.
Finally, the article links to a diagram with a fascinating insight into the connections between some major players in publishing in the UK.
It’s all eye-opening for the publishing industry outsider.
I was watching a programme last night called “The Making of Me”, about the violinist Vanessa Mae.
She was talking with a expert in some field or other (I can’t remember which), but something he said struck a chord with me. He said that professional musicians at the top of their game have one thing in common – they have expended at least 5000 hours each in practice before the age of 16.
It’s an old adage that to be a writer, you need to write and write. I suspect the 5000 hour figure might govern top quality authors too. I wonder how many hours I’ve spent writing so far? Now where did I leave that pencil and paper … ?
Poor Dan Brown. His latest novel is over a year late, and hasn’t yet been submitted to his publishers, who are taking a hit [source].
A while ago I heard rumour that he was on the phone to his editor frequently checking lots of details, as he was drafting it – not a good sign. If true, it sounds like insecurity over the new book (which is supposed to be about Kryptos and the CIA – so I’m quite interesting in reading it myself). Given all the attention, both good and bad, that The DaVinci Code attracted, I can understand his nervousness. It’s the flipside of the success we all hope for, and fair warning for any aspiring bestseller. Neither success nor failure is without its struggle; it’s just a matter of your attitude to it.
Come on Dan, let’s be ‘avin it! It’s only a book, after all.
President Sarkozy is coming to the emerald isle on Monday to discuss the Lisbon Treaty.
The lead-up to this has been surrounded by much controversy. It has been reported that Mr. Sarkozy told his ministers that Ireland will have to vote a second time – a prelude to Monday’s meeting that set noses out of joint on both sides.
This week, it was said that the Irish government was planning a forum with all Lisbon Campaign representatives, but several of the ‘no’ campaigners were concerned that as late as yesterday none of them had been invited to attend. Today, we’ve just heard that most ‘no’ campaigners have been invited. Farcical is how the Irish headlines described the organisation of the event. Was it the Irish government that wanted the dissenters excluded? Or was it the French? Given Sarkozy’s pre-announced agenda, the latter seems more likely. Perhaps in the end, they thought it might be more sensible to dance with the devil in the contained environment of the French embassy, rather than have the devil grab the European media headlines by protesting outside the embassy? Who knows?
I’d love to be a fly in the wall (if not a fly in the soup) in the French Embassy. Still, just guessing what is going on between the various parties at the moment is fun. It will be very entertaining to hear how Monday goes off. Some days, European politics are very interesting indeed – vive la différence!
Score your novel, and no I don’t mean grade it. I mean give it a soundtrack.
One of the things I do to get myself into a creative frame of mind is listen to music. It really limbers up the creative muscles and opens out the emotions. It has another useful side effect too: it can actually help you assemble the pace, mood, tone and structure of the story narrative. Here’s how.
One of the things I tend to do on a new project, particularly at the very beginning of the creative cycle when my imagination is most rampant, is to assemble a playlist of some favorite tracks on my iPod, which can be considered the ‘soundtrack’ to my novel. They can be pieces of music or songs that I am very familiar with and have a deep connection to, or they could be brand new tracks that I heard when starting the novel, or ideally a mixture of both.
It works this way. Imagine you are scoring a film, choosing music to suit particular moments, transitions, or themes. Just pick out pieces that have a particular emotional resonance with you for certain scenes in your story, or music that evokes a sense of place for certain scenes, or lyrics that match the sub-text of what is going on with a character. Anything – just listen to music and let your head roam. Once you have the film ‘soundtrack’ in your mind, it can help you picture the sights, sounds and feelings all the way through the story, as if you were looking at a movie of it. It’s handy to be able to listen to the whole thing, or just listen to a single track to re-evoke the feelings you need to call upon when writing a particular chapter. No one else will ever hear the soundtrack but you.
Give it a go – it really works.
Oh, and one other thing I have found: in doing this, it creates a whole new relationship with your old music, and individual pieces might never be the same again to you. When a novel is done, you’ll need to find some new pieces for the next one.
I’m writing a chunk of plot exposition at the moment. Plot exposition is best avoided in chunks. Like big chunks of anything, it becomes indigestible. I think the ideal way to expose plot is to do it in small fragments, preferably distributed throughout the run of the novel. It is also best if the reader becomes aware of some plot point themselves, rather than having a character obtrusively blurt it out to them. We people prefer, I believe, to discover truths for ourselves rather than have others tell us.
That, of course, is the perfect situation. Life, and stories, are never perfect. Sometimes, there is so much plot exposition that needs to be done, or it simply needs to be done in a compressed span within the story (in order to move the story on), that having a character tell other characters a few home truths (or a lot of home truths) in one large dose can be unavoidable at times. If that information can’t be segued piecemeal into other chapters of the novel, then the best resort left is to ensure that a large block of expository dialogue is broken up into several chapters, with scenes of action in-between. It is very bad to sacrifice pace for exposition; keep it moving.
Of course, you have no idea what I’m referring to. Well, keep an eye out around chapter 30 and you’ll see what I mean. Of course, by then you’ll be so gripped by what is going on and what is being said that chapter structure will be the last thing on your mind – I hope!
It seems we are, or soon will, be in an unprecendented situation within the EU. I think everything I said before about the idealism and opportunity presented by Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty will be moot. Our government’s mis-management of our economy will soon give the EU every reason and opportunity to kick us all the way from Berlin to Boston.
More and more I’m considering that writing is best as a hobby than a career. Rats in the Slushpile makes a convincing argument based on the fickleness and random nature of the publishing industry, but (as if that weren’t enough) I came across the TIME magazine article How Writers Live. It paints a realistic picture of what awaits the majority of writers. Here’s my salient & sobering synopsis:
The number of books published per year has doubled in the last 100 years. Fewer than half now sell more than 5000 copies.
Author royalties are dropping, from 20% a decade ago to an average of 12% now
Advances are smaller than a decade ago (average $1500)
As a result of all this, the number of part-time authors who want to create, but don’t want an impoverished existence (like myself) is on the increase.
As a result of that the average length of time to produce a novel has moved from one year to three years.
All in all, it sounds to me like there is a shift occurring in the publishing industry. The shifting strategy adopted by the publishing industry seems to be to sign-up many authors quickly for as little as possible and drop them just as quickly when they yield no profit, and to adopt ghost writers to pen to order cookie cutter clones of marketable fiction or celebrity non-fiction. Could it be that this strategy is inducing a shift in strategy by authors too, authors who are no longer content to create for such dubious rewards, but rather choose to empower themselves with the new tools of the internet and a flexible part-time writing lifestyle?
Could it be that the publishing industry is killing the golden goose? Or perhaps publishers are simply taking the steps necessary to ensure their survival in a global, competitive environment. On the face of it, it could be claimed that this is leading to a suffocation of human artistic endeavor, but upon closer examination, I think that it is a positive thing because it is leading to a profusion of cottage industry type publishing.
A diversity of many creative voices, which would otherwise be stifled by commercial homogeneity, can only be a good thing for our future.
So my laptop has been acting up for a while. I’ve had at least 3 boot attempts everytime I want to start it up and lately I’ve been getting disk errors too (*shudders*).
I bought it more for its multimedia capabilities and for a bit of programming. Now, when looking for a replacement, I realised I just wanted something for writing on the move and a bit of net surfing, i.e. really portable, lightweight, with no annoying loud fan noises or hard disk clicks this time.
So in searching, I came across the Asus Eee PC 900. It’s really nice. In size, it’s footprint is just a bit larger than a DVD cover – that’ll tell you how portable this thing is. It has a nice lightweight linux installation on it that is both easy to use and highly functional. OpenOffice comes pre-installed for the ‘ol writing. It has a silent solid state disk instead of a winchester hard disk, so can a few knocks without risk of damaging the disk. SSD disk capacities are still fairly small, but a novel doesn’t take much disk space (in fact, I’ve always found it a bit depressing that it takes so much work just to produce about 1 Mb of data!) The screen is large enough to view pages of text or web pages full width. I think kids and students are the main target for it, but I can see why it has so many ‘bigger’ fans too! Some of the more powerful UMPCs are very expensive.
The keyboard has a small footprint, so it takes a bit of getting used to and I needed to slow down my typing speed for a couple of days until I got accustomed to the keys sizes and placement. It will probably need a new larger capacity battery because the one that ships with it will only last less than two hours on a charge.
But overall I’m very impressed with what you can get for 300 euro now. Blink these days and the technology leaps another step.
I read a lot on some blogs and in books about writer’s block and procrastination. Try this for an approach to it:
Imagine for a moment that you can know the date of your death.
Now, imagine that date is about two months from now.
Finally, ask yourself this one question: could I leave the world knowing this book will never be published?
If the answer is no, then write like blazes!
If the answer is yes, then why are you writing the book at all?
