Guardian discussion with Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, and, more recently, Never Let Me Go, is in conversation with John Mullan over on the Guardian Culture Vulture podcast. I've never read an Ishiguro book, but I was interested to hear his comments in the context of the nexus he's made between literary fiction and science fiction (though that nexus may well be in the eye of the beholder; it sounds, to me, like Never Let Me Go is straight science fiction).

Book labelling aside, this is a fairly interesting account of the ideas behind the novel; though I got the impression that Ishiguro thinks clones are somehow different to 'normal' human beings, when they should be identical (as a twin would be), but I'm sure that's just fancy on my part. Keep listening to the end. He makes some comments about the craft of storytelling that I found startling.

Technorati Tags: kazuo ishiguro, never let me go

Grammar Rage

...is like road rage, but with splattered ink. I just came across this excerpt from a 'kooky new grammar book' - they're always new, they're always kooky, but the fundamental indifference of the English language to rules persists - written by an American journalist called June Casagrande (link via Galleycat)

Just like everybody else I felt stupid that I’ve never really understood the difference between "that" and "which," but I didn’t let this shame stop me from confessing my ignorance repeatedly to colleagues until eventually one told me to look it up.

Now here's an odd thing. Generally speaking, nobody seems to know the difference between 'that' and 'which'. And some people seem to run around the place decrying their ignorance in the hope that a poor fool will explain it to them. More fool the poor fool, because, once explained, the questioner will declare the answer to be grammatical mumbo jumbo and, anyway, if the great writers of the English language didn't know the difference, why should they? Well, if you don't want to know, don't ask. Sheesh.

And now that I finally get it, I can see where a major source of my confusion came from: merry old England.

What? I mean, what? Which is to say: WHAT?

Even now, several minutes after reading this article, the heat of my face warms my hands as they bash the keyboard.

Consider the following oh-so-British-sounding sentence: The college which I attend is better than the college which you attend. This use of "which" is found in every rung of British English, from the poorest Cockney flower girl all the way up to classic Monty Python sketches.

Ex-SQUEEZE me? British-sounding? Bri- Bri-

Too. Angry. To. Type.

Perhaps the above sentence would be considered correct over there, even though the Oxford English Grammar seems to suggest that this construction is wrong on both sides of the pond.

No, Ms Casagrande, it effing well would not be considered correct over here. Allow me to solve the mystery of the perplexing Oxford English Grammar advice on the use of 'that' and 'which': the OEG presents this rule because it is bloody well the right rule, and always has been. All editions Fowler's observe it. So too does the Guardian's online style guide, which is a little quirky otherwise. The interchangeability of that and which is not a 'Britishicism' or, as you say in your quaint, murder-inviting way, 'Brit-speak'.

Jp. Jp. Aaargh. Anger. Rising. Once. More.

Blimey, what must I be like in real life? Just don't get me started on grammar. Just. Don't.

Hhhhhhhhhhhhh'OK. Let me concede that, yes, I know the odd British writer who doesn't understand the difference between 'that' and 'which'. Douglas Adams is one, and - though the esteem in which I hold his work is well documented - it's always been a source of slight embarrassment that Adams couldn't tell the difference and neither, presumably, could any of the editors who looked over his manuscripts prior to their publication. But I've seen American authors make this mistake more often. Let's remember that I don't sample randomly from all fiction, so I can't make any claims about American fiction in general, but only last week I was reading Stephen King's (nicely done) From a Buick 8 and noticed a which/that error.

Now, I'm a slightly odd person. (I know. You're shocked.) I have a PhD in an arcane discipline called syntactic psycholinguistics. Oh, the stories I could tell about complementizer ambiguity! I spent four years of my life, which I will never get back, giving people tests cunningly designed to analyze the manner in which they processed sentences containing - what are known in the trade as - relative clauses.

Here're two things about grammar: (1) Grammatical relationships are fiendishly complex. (2) No matter how fiendishly complex they are, rest assured that you are fully expert in their use.

Let me explain. Look at this:

The grammatical relationships are represented by the tree-like structure. It seems complicated, and it is, but if you've got this far in my post then you're already an expert, and you've already outstripped the best of our man-made machines designed to comprehend language simply by reading my sentences, particularly long, complex ones like this. You have these rules already, and they're between your ears.

You developed a knowledge of these relationships as a child because your brain is designed to hoover them up (the suction drops considerably once you're out of your teens, by the way, so try to learn languages when you're young). Back to 'that' and 'which'. You can learn the difference between the two just by being exposed to good examples. You don't need to bother with technical terms, though 'restrictive' vs. 'non-restrictive' might be helpful as a memory aide. Take a look at these sentences:

(1) The car that was red interested the buyer.

(2) The car, which was red, interested the buyer.

Now, I repeat: you already know this. Just mull over the sentences and let the difference in meaning percolate out. In (1), the buyer was interested, out of all the cars on display, in the red one. In (2), the buyer was interested in the car and it happened to be red. The redness isn't important. In fact, it can be snipped out with no impact on the main assertion of the sentence (as suggested by the commas).

That's it. All done. The next time you find yourself expressing an idea in this way (and this construction is very common in English) then: if you're restricting the first bit of the sentence, use 'that'; if you're just describing the first bit of the sentence, use 'which'. Remember, if you can see a difference in meaning between (1) and (2), you already have the rule between your ears, and don't worry about naming the 'subject' and 'relative pronoun' and all the other gubbins. If you use this construction once or twice in the next couple of days, I expect you'll appreciate that the distinction between 'that' and 'which' is very useful.

And not just because you're an American.

Grr.

Technorati Tags: clause, eats shoots leaves, puppy, relative pronoun, writing

Jonathan Freedland et noms de plum

I came across an article yestermorn written by Jonathan Freedland. For those who don't know, Mr Freedland is a columnist for one of the UK's leftish newspapers, the Grauniad. (See a full list of his columns.) He's been putting himself about recently - appearing on the BBC's Newsnight Review, for example - and his thrust to the forefront can only be attributed to the publication of his debut novel, The Righteous Men. Now, by all accounts, Freedland is a gifted columnist (he was named Columnist of the Year in the 2002 What the Papers Say awards), but The Righteous Men has not drawn stellar reviews - only two so far, and neither very positive (see Grumpy's article for a summary). This is yet another example, I fear, of a journalist who thinks that, because he uses words for a living, he can write a novel. How many house painters make the transition to portraiture?

I don't want to talk about the book here - because I haven't read it - but I wanted to draw your attention to the Guardian article I mentioned above. In the article, which I read last evening, Mr Freedland waxes the barely lyrical on the adoption of a nom de plume. The digested read: "It started as a bit of a joke, then my agent liked it, so I kept it." Mr Freedland, pointlessly, goes on to list many other authors who used noms de plume, and then the article ends. It's a piece of fluff copy with absolutely no aim that is, clearly, designed to keep the ball of his book in the air.

To paraphrase John Barlow, I don't know why I wrote any of this. (Check out Grumpy's thoughts on Barlow's Intoxicated.)

Oh yeah, it was to test my new blog picture system. Look! It has a drop shadow. I love my Mac.

Technorati Tags: jonathan freedland, nom de plume, pseudonym, robert ludlum

Review of Morris's Taking Comfort

At the risk of turning into the Exeter branch of Macmillan New Writing's marketing division, I should note that my review of Roger Morris's novel, Taking Comfort (which is the first MNW novel) is up on that jewel in the literary firmament, Spike Magazine. The short version: A good effort from a promising debut author, well worth reading. You'll never look at a Sabatier the same way again.

Macmillan New Writing: Transparent Imprint by Michael Barnard

As I've recounted elsewhere on this blog, the indefatigable marketeers behind the Macmillan New Writing imprint have sent me all six of the first New Writing titles, including an account of the imprint's inception and execution by Michael Barnard, the bloke behind the imprint. If you don't know what the Macmillan New Writing imprint is, here's a crib: MNW is a venture designed to publish new authors. Its author contract is non-negotiable and some controversy has resulted from the nature of this contract. More below.

Though I only asked for a review copy of Roger Morris's debut Taking Comfort (the review will appear on Spike Magazine shortly [UPDATE: here it is]), Barnard's book arrived, separately, a few days ago - that in itself is an indication of the marketing effort behind the books, which already outstrips that afforded to most books by first authors. I don't want to anticipate my review of Morris's book, so I will restrict my comments in this post to my reaction to Barnard's book, Transparent Imprint. This is not a book review; I've focused on one or two parts of the whole. Note also that I'm telegraphing this from deep inside writer's territory. If I were a publisher, I might have a different perspective. Further, this is not a systematic review of the MNW imprint; these are just a few points that sprung to mind as I was reading.

OK, cards on table time: Some months ago, I sent MNW an electronic copy of my second novel, Proper Job, and it was, alarmingly, not published forthwith. I'm not too disheartened because (1) the same manuscript was praised by a leading literary agent as 'fresh, lean, original and inventive' (2) it is my second novel, and thus contravenes the 'debut author' stipulation, so it couldn't be published anyway - stupidity on my part. However, let it be said that MNW have rejected my novel, and though I'm not aware of biases in my attitude towards the imprint, better to observe this.

Who is this Michael Barnard, the man behind MNW? Here is his author biography:

Michael Barnard spent the first part of his working life as a freelance writer and as a reporter, sub editor and editor on newspapers and magazines. He joined the Macmillan publishing group in 1972. He was appointed to the main board in 1985. His responsibilities have included magazine, journal and book publishing and the management of the group's technical, production and distribution operations. His is the author of several books about print and publishing technology, lectures on publishing and production, and is a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London

So he has a fine pedigree in publishing. He is near the end of his career, and is therefore in a position to take risks. Not that MNW represents a great risk. The first chapters of the book - in which Barnard explicitly sets out to counter negative publicity in the form of opinion pieces that lack empirical foundation - are spent outlining the genesis of MNW, and these chapters did not enamour me of Barnard, though that changed as the book wore on (and it does wear). He paints himself and the Macmillan board as rather noble types who do their jolly best against the spectre of poor sales. They genuinely worry about their role in the smothering of new talent - because they can never get it to sell - and when Barnard suggests, at a committee meeting, that they should actually look at unsolicited (i.e. unagented) manuscripts, it appears to be met with responses of the 'What a cracking idea!' variety.

In the margin, I pencilled, 'Hmm.'

Why, you might wonder, has this not been raised at such a meeting before? Well, it appears

...that we had decided some years previously that we could no longer manage the mound of manuscripts.
"Could we ask authors to send in electronic files?" [Barnard] asked. The Pan Macmillan directors could not see any obstacle to that, although at the time the 'no submissions' policy had been introduced, the idea of sending books as email attachments was quite novel and few authors could have managed it. [p. 5]

So the policy had been introduced God-knows-when, and nobody - presumably those same nobodies who worked in a modern UK business - had the idea, until 28 December 2004, that books could be sent as Word attachments. Well, I suspect that a number of my fellow writers have had that idea - repeatedly, each time they hand over their money to post office staff along with a weighty manuscript. Back to Barnard: It turns out that this is a lynchpin of MNW. It will have a streamlined submission process where manuscripts are handled electronically.

I admit that I was initially confused by this. Barnard suggested the electronic submission process because he thought it would save time by decreasing the assessment period. My impression is that the rest of the industry has actively avoided this route precisely because they think the decrease in assessment time will be offset by the increase in submissions. It will be interesting to see if the practice is taken up elsewhere - but I doubt it. I think the idea that the placement of a hurdle whereby all first-time authors print and physically ship their work is still regarded by both agents and publishers as a filtering process, where the wheat of dedicated writers will be sifted from the trash of the no-hopers.

Let me say that, at the close of this book, I was impressed by Michael Barnard and thought that his heart was in the right place. I'm also convinced that MNW - particularly because of the marketing support, which I've had first-hand experience of - is a good option for first-time authors.

However, it took me a long time to come to that conclusion. I thought that, in his efforts to swing the pendulum of negative publicity in favour of MNW, his polemical style undermined the thrust of his argument: that MNW is a pretty good deal for first-time authors, is not vanity publishing, and involves editing and good publicity support. The only real difference between this scheme and the publication of 'normal' (whatever that means) authors is the non-negotiable nature of the contract.

I'd like to quote some portions of the early part of the book. The reader may like to note that these points are presented in, as I have said, a polemic context.

This is a much-debated question, but I think it is reasonable to assume that the main purpose of an advance is to enable an author to finish a book. [p. 8]

We would therefore consider only complete books and not pay an advance because the principal reason for an advance did not apply. [p. 9]

Well, Barnard and I do not fall on the same side of the debate in this instance. An advance is a loan given to an author against future royalties, full stop. For the author this is an upfront return on time and energy already invested in the project, and should be equally applied whether the author has finished a book or partly completed it. Indeed, the financial case for a publisher to give an author an advance for a completed book is much stronger because (i) it is not certain that an unfinished manuscript may be completed and (ii) the publisher is in a better position to judge the quality of the work if they can see it in complete form, and from there a more accurate sales forecast can be generated. I'm afraid that, to my jaundiced eye, the above statement makes me think that Barnard simply doesn't want to pay his authors because he wants to keep costs down. If that is case, then he should say so. (At this juncture it should also be noted that an advance provides an incentive for a publisher to make its fullest efforts with marketing. But surely, you ask, it makes sense for a publisher to do this in all cases? To an extent. But an advance represents an investment in the product over the standard investment already given in terms of editing and production. The advance can remind the publisher that it must do its part, even as the publisher is busy reminding the author to do theirs. Post script: In the context of MNW, it must be said that the marketing guys and gals have got off to a flying start, despite the absence of an advance.)

Another string in the bow of Barnard's polemic is his 'author first' outlook, which he makes clear in the opening pages of the book. This is undermined somewhat by his decision [p. 10] to calculate royalties on the basis of net receipts (actual unit payment) rather than gross (the notional selling price of the book). Fine, you might say. This makes financial sense. If the author's cut is protected, then the publisher's cut is eroded when the book is discounted by a bookshop. So the author is forced to carry burden of discount on equal terms with the publisher. Well, boo-hoo, you might argue. But any other publishing contract is subject to negotiation under the firey glare of a literary agent. MNW contracts are non-negiotable, which renders an agent pointless. So any unfairnesses - which I think is the right word; MNW is the behemoth, the author is the little guy - cannot be remedied through discussion of, perhaps, the royalty rate, or other aspects of the contract.

And let's not forget that MNW have loaded the dice in their favour. World rights: MNW has these, non-negotiable. Other versions of the book, in electronic form, etc.: MNW has the rights to these. Subsidiary rights, for TV spin-offs, etc.: MNW has the rights but will split any proceeds fifty-fifty ('simple and not open to confusion' [p. 17]; another word for 'confusion' would be 'negotiation'). Next book option: MNW has the right to first refusal on the author's next book.

So it looks like MNW are sitting fairly pretty. Not bad for an enterprise that appears, on the surface, to be daring. It turns out that: (1) If an author sells loads of books, MNW will be compensated through their control of the rights (I couldn't work out whether the same deal applies to the second book); (2) If an author sells few books, MNW will be compensated by dint of 'streamlined' lack of investment in advances and editing.

You may remember that, earlier in this post, I said that I was impressed by Barnard and thought that his intentions were noble. How does this sit with the comments above? Well, it's clear that Barnard is working within financial constraints. Obviously. It's a company, we live in a capitalist society, and blah blah blah, comrade. And I think that the deal is not a bad one. After all, when an author signs away their rights, including, implicitly, the right to negotiation, remember that they do have a book published in return - unlike 99.5% of others who will not live to see their fiction published. So, caveat. But I do wish that Barnard had not couched his comments about the setting up of the process in such polemical language, because it undermines the points he wishes to make. As an author, I'm used to hearing that publishers don't make money on fiction and isn't that sad? Well, yes, it's heart-breaking. But let's not forget that, in the game between the publisher and the author, the publisher sets the rules.

The rules set by MNW are somewhat restrictive, but I don't think we need to worry about the kind of publishing world Armageddon envisaged by some of the nay-sayers in regards to MNW, and Barnard shouldn't get too worked up about it. This is a more important thing than the nuts and bolts of the publishing process: the content of the books themselves.

A Brief Overview of Ebooks and their Readers

Over on the BBCi website, you can find a video about the history and future of the Ebook reader, a mooted device that may - or may not - revolutionize literature. An Ebook reader is an electronic device dedicated to the display and storage of books. This technology has been heralded as 'next generation', and probably forever will be. As a person who tends to embrace technology, I think the designers of the ebook have missed something fundamental: our current technology for the delivery of literature - the book - is already a piece of technology that fits its design niche with staggering perfection. Still, best of luck to Sony - not. Virus via a book, anyone?

Hell is other people at breakfast

A writer An editor called Petrona made a comment on one of my earlier articles about depression and arts. She pointed out this article by an American writer called Jonathan Rauch, who is, apparently, a senior writer for National Journal. I don't know what the National Journal is, but this guy can write. It's a wonderful, witty article about the nature of introversion, and how to act around your introverted friends. Introverted people, he suggests, are not shy:

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

Well, the first two things any reader will do when confronted by this is (a) decide whether or not they are an introvert and (b) count the ways in which this makes them unique and better than everyone else. Here I go: I guess I'm somewhat introverted, but not shy. When my girlfriend and I entertain 10+ people, we always have a good time, but I collapse face-down on the bed afterwards. At the same time, I've learned to be virtually nerveless when talking to a large group of people, like an undergraduate lecture audience or the research staff at a university. In fact, I taught oral presentation skills for a number of years, and a kind of mathematics related to artificial intelligence called connectionist modelling - where slightest shred of nerves would have sent my ability to do improv'd arithmetic straight out the window.

Before this blog becomes unreadbly self-referential, I'll leave the last word to Mr Rauch:

We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."

Amen, brother. And the title of this post, by the way, is attributed to Sartre.

Flashback completed

Well, today I wrote the final words of my current book, a technothriller called Flashback. (The final words? "Like a ghost.") The first draft comes in at 125,410 words, which is shade over the word count I aimed for when I started the manuscript in November. It's only the first draft, but there's not just the satisfaction of having written the book - there is also the knowledge that the story works. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the story worked as well as it could; for that, it will take some months of editing. But the story did grip me as I wrote it (there were no moments of writers' block, whatever that is) and if it doesn't work on the page in its present form, that probably means some superficial rearrangement is necessary. I say 'superficial' rather lightly, of course. Superficial changes like 'make this scene less intense', 'improve this character's motivation' and so on will seem progressively unsuperficial as the editing process bites.

I've noticed some posts over on John Barlow's blog and Grumpy's about the amount of time some novelists spend writing a book. In some senses, the question is a little like 'How long does it take to build a house?' Depends on the amount of land, your materials, and what you want to end up with. But since I've just finished the first draft, it might be apposite to consider how the writing process went.

Flashback began as a loose collection of ideas at the beginning of last year (around May, when I was coming to the end of Proper Job). I knew I wanted to write more about a character called Saskia Brandt, from my first novel, Déjà Vu. Spoiler alert: Saskia has traveled backwards in time to the year 2002. She has already seen herself as a middle-aged woman in the year 2023 (still following?), so she knows that, at least until the year 2023, she cannot be killed. I wondered how this would make Saskia feel. Fearless, because she can't die? Trapped, because she understands that all her actions have been predetermined? Anyway, I had an image of Saskia climbing aboard a aircraft to ensure - for a some reason - that it would not crash. In its final form in the book, the idea is a little different, but the spirit of the idea remains. I had other flashes of ideas: Saskia is German, and I wanted to incorporate the connection that Germans feel with the forest; I wanted to have an English character lost in Germany too, perhaps to serve as a proxy of the disconnection that Saskia must feel, since she is stranded in our time.

Following a 'research' trip to the Bavarian National Forest in July of 2005, I read up on aircrash investigation, re-read the Grimm fairytales, and stared out of windows a great deal. Towards the end of my research, I came across an interesting aircrash in the Andes (the crash of the Star Dust). This wasn't the first time I'd heard about that crash, having seen the excellent Horizon documentary a few years ago, but it fit perfectly into the revenge backstory. I knew, immediately, the fate of the Star Dust was - in my fictional world - connected to the crash of Saskia's plane in 2002. That was the point I knew I had a book's worth of story.

There were a couple of surprises along the way. The finished book didn't turn out anything like the rough synopsis I had when I started (summarisable in a sentence). Another surprise came in the form of the nature of the book; I thought it would be a sequel to Déjà Vu, but the book is basically standalone. It actually took a little longer to write than I thought, too. I started writing on Friday 21st October 2005. Aim: Write 1000 words per day, seven days a week. My work rate was 820 a day, so I missed the target. But some days were research intensive, and I was careful to avoid those 'brain warming up' paragraphs that would eventually need to be removed during editing, and I treated the prose like I was writing a short story: tight, to the point, and entertaining.

So, the process of writing Flashback has been a positive one. Some of the days were long, some were dark, but there were no times when the story got hard to write; the characters were always engaging and it was never difficult to 'fall through the hole in the paper', to use a Stephen King phrase. And now, if you'll excuse me, I will adjourn for a beer.

125,410 / 125,410 (100.0%)

Technorati Tags: books, fiction, publishing, thriller, writing

An Irresistable Presence that Women will find Attractive, and Other Stories

Did I really just read this on a martial arts website?

Just imagine how you will feel when you've learned how to REALLY defend yourself. You won't get bothered much anymore. The knowledge that you can kick anyone's ass will give you an irresistable [sic] presence that women find incredibly attractive.

The stuff ones stumbles across when Googling high-speed death strikes doesn't bear thinking about.

John Barlow's blog

It appears that John Barlow, author of Eating Mammals and Intoxicated, has joined the cool cats of the blogging world. Check out what he has to say about writing, authors, and his hobbies (nothing), over at his site. John's style is accessible and irreverent, so the blog should be one to watch.

Progress on Flashback

Most of this week has been swallowed by my work-in-progress, Flashback. I've entered the high-octane last scenes, and there has been a appreciable slowdown in the number of words on paper each day. This phenomenon is an odd one. I experienced it with my previous two novels. I think I'm almost reluctant to leave the universe I've created. There is a temptation to just keep writing, but, of course, the arc of the story means that it must end in short order (and Bristol fashion). A pity.

This warm glow will disappear when I return to the book for the editing process, to be replaced by the cold grip of nausea as I grow steadily sickened by the same scenes, over and over, until all the goodness fades and only the flaws remain. Can't wait!

A couple of blog-induced thingies have happened over the past week. First, Jay Rayner, novelist, Observer food critic, and author of 'Star Dust Falling' - which is a factual account of the context and immediate aftermath of the 1947 'Star Dust' crash, a central event in my current thriller - contacted me to ask for a synopsis. (If you go to my dedicated Flashback page, you'll see that I offer to supply the synopsis on demand.) Naturally enough, I don't have a synopsis. Oh no. That would be too easy. I will have one, I'm sure - just as soon as I've finished the book. So I sent Jay just the section that involves a flashback (geddit?) to Buenos Aires in 1947.

Jay returned my email with a dry comment that he couldn't take a week off to read the extract, and could I please just send him the synopsis when I have it. At this point, I opened the attachment and checked the pages. One-hundred and forty-three. Ahem. Fair point. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this novel is getting quite long for a thriller (see word count meter below), and just because an extract is a sliver of the whole doesn't mean it ain't a fair chunk o'words. Anyway, it will be very interesting to know what Jay thinks of the synopsis, since he's an expert on the things I've only tried to imagine.

On a related note, I received a kind email from Stewart Waring, a pilot with Flightline - a leading charter airline - who had come across my site shortly after reading a book full of inaccuracies about aviation. He offered to fact-check some of my chapters so that I don't make the same mistakes. Stewart has extensive experience with different aircraft, and has flown more than one hundred types, including the Spitfire. His input will be enormously valuable - I just hope he knows what he's let himself in for. Only yesterday did I find out what an aileron is. God help Flashback.

118,711 / 120,000 (98.0%)

Technorati Tags: publishing, thriller, writing

Depression in the Arts

Grumpy Old Bookman draws my attention to some research into depression in those who make their living (or try to) from the arts.

May I draw your attention, yet again, to the research published by Kay Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her study showed that 38% of a group of eminent British writers and artists had been treated for a mood disorder of one kind or another; of these, 75% had had antidepressants or lithium prescribed, or had been hospitalised. Of playwrights, 63% had been treated for depression. These proportions are, as you will have guessed, are many times higher than in the population at large.

Well, I'm not startled by this because I can't think of another profession that applies pressures more conducive to depression than the arts, and writing fiction in particular.

I teach psychological research methods to postgraduate students, and I have a PhD in experimental psychology, so you might think I have some form of expertise. And the answer is 'yes', I do have some form of expertise, but, alas, it is unrelated to clinical psychology. It is much more related to four years studying the word 'that'. However, 'that' won't stop me (Oh, God, kill me know) observing that the job of writing somewhat predisposes us towards depression

The writer works alone and for long periods. Social isolation is linked to depression because social interaction provides various kinds of support that can inhibit depressive thoughts and tendencies. The writer doesn't get much exercise. Regular exercise mitigates against the development of depressive symptoms. The writer is poorly paid, and this might lead to poor diet (though I must say that, in my case, the reduction in shopping budget has led to healthier meals), which is linked to depression. Poor pay is also linked to lowered social status, another causal factor in depression. Finally, your success as a writer is almost completely attributable to other people - editors, publishers, readers - and when those people aren't helpful (i.e. you almost never find yourself in court defending a pointless action that will only drive up sales of your already monstrous book), this might lead to a sense of hopelessness, and a feeling that the fundamentals of life are not under your control.

A psychologist called Julian Rotter developed the idea of 'locus of control'. Essentially, it refers to the individual's conception of whether the important things in life (relationships, job, well-being, etc.) are determined by the individual - an internal locus of control - or determined by external forces - an external locus of control. This is probably gets to the nub of the matter. Artists are constantly exposed to approval from the word go, from photographers to painters to writers, and constantly at threat that the approval will be withdrawn (I would guess). Of course, artists are perhaps more sensitive than the general population, too.

Am I depressed? No. But then, I'm an idiot. Only an idiot would want to write for money (the point Grumpy makes, not for the first time) when he should be tucked away in a university somewhere, researching his overeducated arse off.

It must be said that I've been somewhat glib with my description of depression in this article. If you suspect yourself, or someone you know, to be suffering from depression, you should seek professional medical advice. Here are some websites about depression catalogued by an organisation for which I work.

Technorati Tags: fiction, puppy, writing

New episode of Déjà Vu uploaded

A quick post to say that the latest episode of Déjà Vu has been uploaded. The two protagonists have now reached America, where they hope to find the answers to an explosion that occurred in 2002, twenty years before, and the true identity of the brainwashed Saskia Brandt. Confused? Play catch-up.

I've added, by request, a form to the sidebar that will allow you subscribe to this blog by email. I know. You can barely contain your indifference. Ooh, ooh, and I've put a drop shadow 'neath the graphic of Déjà Vu. Don't say I don't love my blog readers.

Taking stick from Jason Bourne

To borrow a chess term, the end game of my current novel is in sight. The end game represents an attempt to weave the last of the story threads together in way that should be - as far as I can tell, since I only have the perspective of the writer, not a reader - satisfying but not too neat.

Over the past few days, as my head fills with moments, mostly visual, that I want to present in the final pages, I've been thinking about the genre of thriller. Here are a few improv'd thoughts. Remember that I've only written one thriller, and claim no expertise.

Are thrillers documentary-like entities, or do they have the gestalt power of metaphorical works?

By this I mean: The core of many thrillers lies in their intimate interface with the 'real' world. The elements of politics, conspiracy, high stakes and resourceful protagonists combine to carry the reader through the pages from, often, a 'world in balance' at the beginning of the story to a 'world in balance' at the end. In this sense, it is like a rollercoaster, and should have the concomitant twists and turns. Now, against that interpretation is the view I hold to be true of all stories: The story is a rarified, compressed and meaningful sequence; its resemblance to reality is superficial. All scenes, characters, objects and dialogue have been selected on the basis of their meaning (either a meaning that is intrinsic to the thriller, such as the role of light in Gilroy's script of 'The Bourne Supremacy', or extrinsic, such as the US President's teenage son in Forsyth's 'The Negotiator', whose kidnap represents a attempt to murder the notion of potential). It is a commonly-held belief, I suspect, that a thriller must represent realism on all levels, but one of the lessons I've learned (I think!) in writing 'Flashback' is that the power of metaphor can harnessed within the thriller genre. It is a rich seam and should be mined. Of course, any given metaphor is weakened the moment a reader becomes conscious of its meaning, and playing with metaphor is like playing with dynamite. The trick is to handle it appropriately.

The thriller must progress, from page one, as a series of escalating emotional moments.

I've read several thrillers over the past year where the author has substituted the revelation of information for points that would be better as character-focused, emotional moments. This sounds a bit dogmatic, but let me explain: Popular fiction is traditionally partitioned into character- and plot-driven varieties. This can lead to the misconception that plot-heavy books - as thrillers are wont to be - suffer from impoverished characterisation. Not so; more than likely, those thrillers that you regard as excellent are those where the author has fallen in love, just a little, with the main character, and painted this pressurized personality in rich colours. Into this category I'll put Robert Harris's Fatherland, whose story is viewed through the jaundiced eyes of Xavier March, and the film The Bourne Identity, written by Tony Gilroy. So, at the close of my second thriller novel, I've learned that the engine of the book will never rev higher that identification the reader invests in the protagonist. An obvious point? Possibly. But in the thriller world, where the constraints of action, intrigue, cool gadgets, and histronics can smother characterisation (and, let's face it, the former are easier to pull off), it's worth writing this on a strip of paper and pinning it on the wall above your computer

The thriller writer must control tone at all times.

In my (progressively less humble) opinion, the maintenance of tone is paramount. Whereas a literary work might pass through joy, dread, anger, sympathy, and heartbreak, when you find yourself putting a quip in the mouth of a minor character a la the comic relief in a Shakespearian genre, the effect is equal to sprinkling salt on your breakfast cereal. In other words, you bugger it up. In my first novel, some of my favourite bits were the gags. Since I also write comedy fiction, such gags pop up on my writerly radar with some frequency. But the gags were the first thing to be excised by my editor, and my protestations fell upon justifiably deaf ears. Why no gags? The thriller must be kinetic; each emotional beat must fall and press upon the next, and those emotions will be fear, despair, entrapment - all those that make you root for the protagonist. If an Olympic sprinter makes a gag at the start of an important race, his or her competitors will ignore it. Why? Focus. These diversions are cracks, like metal fatigue. The thriller is a submarine and the higher the stakes, the deeper you make your depth. Humour-cracks in the hull are no good.

The thriller is a game played by the reader and the writer, but it is not a game for the protagonist(s)

It is sometimes difficult for the thriller to prioritise on the story; and, as I suggested above, I think the story is a series of emotional moments, not 'what happens'. The problem comes with the manipulation of information. Often, in the thriller, the audience must be kept in the dark, so that suspense can be heightened. But the efforts of the author to regulate the flow of information should not be prioritised over characterisation, because characterisation is everything. I would argue the Da Vinci Code failed on this score. The result: explosive compression. The book founders. An example where the manipulation of information combines well with characterisation is in the work of Alastair Maclean. Maclean is seldom read these days, but when I read him as a teenager, I was truly gripped by his books in a way that no other book - despite the claims of marketing blurb on many - has gripped me since. True, his plots were often cliched, his female characters unwritten or absent, and his heros inexhaustibly resourceful...but those books flew. I remember reading 'The Dark Crusader' with my mouth agape. So too 'Fear is the Key'. And my favourite, perhaps, is 'Ice Station Zebra'. I suspect that if I re-read those books ten years later (now), they would not have the same power, but MacLean, like the team behind the Bourne Identity, had the essence of a good thriller: high stakes, a compelling main character, extraordinary circumstances, and a plot to make you think.

Oddly - because my thriller is word-based, not picture-based - I've been making a study of 'The Bourne Identity' and 'The Bourne Supremacy' over the past few weeks. There are gems in the director's commentary (sadly, no commentary exists on the Identity Special Edition), and the casts' thoughts about the story, why it works, and how they tried to maintain the tone. I'm partly drawn to these works because the character of Jason Bourne shares some characteristics with my own protagonist, Saskia Brandt: Both are capable killers once controlled by a shadowy organisation, both have lost their memory and wish to rediscover their pasts; cf. The Long Kiss Goodnight. Don't worry about plagiarism, by the way! I'd finished the first draft of Déjà Vu long before before the first Bourne film was released in 2002, and I've never read a Ludlum book (though I know I should). I see Saskia Brandt and Jason Bourne as characters in the long tradition of fiction exploring identity. I'm interested in the Bourne Identity because of the fluency with which the creative team have combined the thriller plot with excellent characterisation, and stuffed all that into 119 minutes; and only using as many words as a longish short story. When I write a scene in Flashback, I ask myself, 'Does this reach the same quality as a scene from Identity/Supremacy?'

Well, does it? I don't know. But it doesn't hurt a hopeful long-jumper to mark the world record length with a bit of gaffer tape.

Current progress on Flashback:

109,704 / 120,000 (90.0%)

Technorati Tags: books, bourne identity, fiction, frederick forsyth, thriller, robert ludlum, story structure

British Mac Podcast

I say. Rather. What? Like the crap bits from Python combined with Rustie Lee-calibre enthusiasm for recipes that help you get more from your Mac, this new podcast I've discovered is either brilliant or awful.

As a podcaster myself, I'm always on the lookout for things for my brain to do while my body performs unspectacular feats of strength in the gym. I'll collect a few of the best podcasts together and blog them next week sometime

In the meantime, as a Mac user, I can recommend the twisted world of the British Mac podcast. Don't forget to listen to the end; it gets weirder.

Best of British, chaps. What?

A Woman from Cairo

For a while now, I've been following the blog of Val Landi, an American author, where Val charts the progress of his book, A Woman from Cairo. No surprise there; all we writers bang on about our books. But Val is in an interesting position (and I use the word 'interesting' in the sense that means 'bloody irritating'). Or at least he was.

Let me explain. Val submitted his manuscript - like you do - to a top-flight New York agent and, hussah, she loved the book. But while publishers the length of the United States also loved the book, they were uncomfortable with its terrorist theme. Hello? How can a modern thriller, published in post-9/11 America, not have a terrorist theme? Beats me.

I must have missed something on Val's blog, because it appears that A Woman from Cairo has been published. A quick look at the publisher reveals it to be BookSurge Publishing, a service for authors to self-publish. Before you spit your tea (in Britain) or coffee (in America) over your computer and fumble for the vanity alarm on the underside of your desk, remember that Val got rave rejections from top agents and publishers. Yes, this is self-publishing, but what else is Val going to do? He probably spent years writing the book and doesn't want it to fester in drawer because of publishing timidity.

His Amazon page rank right now is 31,000, ten thousand up from yesterday, so this looks like a good decision. Val is unlikely to be in this game for the money - no writer is - but a good ranking, plus the exposure and reviews that come with it, will not harm his chances of placing the book with a larger publisher (if he chooses to do so) or landing a contract for the follow up. Val, incidentally, is a proponent of an indie model of book distribution, something I'm also doing with the podcast of Déjà Vu.

A final note: There are plenty of good reviews for his book, but I couldn't avoid the impression from his first few pages (available here) that the book might have benefitted from more stringent editing. There are so many unnecessary adjectives and - gasp! - adverbs that, for me, the prose borders on unreadable. But this might be a personal thing; my own prose is somewhat hard-boiled. And how can I talk, given my penchant for the dreaded semi-colon? Best of luck to him.

And by the way: If ever there was example to counter the prevailing notion that good books invariably find a home with traditional publishers, this is it. Publishers are not, and never have been, in the business of publishing well-crafted stories. They aim to publish books that they think will sell in volume. Sometimes the two properties are found in the same manuscript. But only sometimes.

Technorati Tags: a woman from cairo, agent, books, fiction, publishing, val landi, writing

Debut cyberthriller

New author Michael Fuchs writes to say that his debut novel, The Manuscript, is soon to be published as part of the Macmillan New Writing imprint. I must say that their marketing department is mustard-strength keen; I requested a review copy of another Macmillan book, Roger Morris's Taking Comfort, and they sent me all the upcoming books. Fuchs's book is among them, and I'll probably review it somewhere.

Fuchs - that means fox, by the way; author in Zorro mask on the back cover; marketing opportunity? I think so - has created a nice website. One part that caught my interest was his description of the novel as a philosophical thriller. Funny, because some classical philosophy underlies my own debut novel, but I never had the balls to call it a 'philosophical cyberthriller'. Sounds like Fuchs tells it like it is. No reviews of the book as yet, but you can order a copy via Amazon UK.

Happy St Piran's Day

As a Cornish author, it is my duty to uphold certain customs. For example, I shake my head sadly at bakeries that sell bizarre meat contraptions that are simply not Cornish pasties (though look what I found in a Berlin side street). I also use the word 'minute' to mean any period of time between sixty seconds and the coming of the next Ice Age. Today, I must disseminate the wonderful news that it is St Piran's Day.

Who? Oh, please. Everybody knows that...[checks Wikipedia]...yeah, that he's the patron saint of Cornwall, though Saints Michael and Petroc also lay claim to this title, somewhat obviously. Anywho, you might have seen the flag of St Piran - white cross on a black background - round and about. Check out these photos of Cornish people celebrating in style.

Yes, they are wearing kilts. No, I don't have one - by order of a local magistrate.

St Piran was Irish, by the way. Go figure.

Image copyright (c) FreeFoto.com

Tupungato Dead Ahead

Being the crazy, Devil-may-care type that I am, I'll be experimenting for the next few weeks with pictures on my blog. First up is a view of Mount Tupungato, Argentina. I used Google Earth to visualize the view from the cockpit of CS-59 in the moments before impact, because I've reached the point in my novel where this happens and I'm interested in how it would appear to a pilot.

You know what? I felt a little uneasy as I ran the animation and saw the volcano expand until it filled my monitor. I spend my life straining to imagine the events of my characters - and, because this is a thriller, some of those events are unpleasant - but this was different. This actually happened. Yes, the last moment of the 'Star Dust' is enigmatic and, yes, we'd all like to know what that final transmission 'STENDEC' means, but...these were real people.

After I ran the animation, I turned to one of the books I've been using for research, the excellent 'Star Dust Falling', by Jay Rayner. He supplies a list of the passengers and crew at the back of his book. When I first read that list, the names were meaningless. I might have been looking at a phonebook. Now, when I see those names, I see people, and I remember the wise cracks made to my fictional narrator, the way Harald Pagh plays the piano, how his friend Jack Gooderham might tell him to 'belt up' in a good-natured way, and so on.

I know that real people sometimes feature in imaginary works. Norman Mailer, for example, describes a number of them in Harlot's Ghost, my current bedtime book. (And Frederick Forsyth did a sterling job with Charles de Gaulle in The Day of the Jackal.) But I wonder whether using real people is appropriate for my book. Sure, they died in 1947, so they can't sue me, but that isn't the point. But they are the grandfathers and grandmothers of people alive today.

It's something to think about; and certainly a job for the editing process, which I'll embark upon shortly. One option will be to change their names and occupations. It does seem a shame, though, since the passengers are so much part of the 'Star Dust' story.

105,484 / 120,000 (87.0%)

Greased Lightning: Print on Demand

I note Mr Victor Keegan has written a sequel to his earlier Guardian article on self-publishing. He makes some interesting points. For example, 50% of all books published with an ISBN sell fewer than 250 copies. Now that's interesting. A second statistic is worth repeating: only 1% of manuscripts submitted are published. Is it just me, or is this second stat extraordinarily high?

Back to the article. It is nice to see the mainstream press catching up with a technology that is now long-in-the-tooth; yes, it has yet to be accepted by mainstream publishing companies, but this is due the lumbering nature of these companies (say more expert commentators than me).

Does the jobbing writer need to know much about delivery mechanisms? You'd think not, but it never hurts to have a working knowledge of the industry you hope to join. One example where forewarned is forearmed comes from our Great British high street. On these, the behemothic bricks-and-mortar shops of Ottakar's and Waterstone's and highly allergic to Print-On-Demand titles. Why? For one, POD publishers are not in a position to acquiesce to the terms of such stores, and need treatment that shop managers regard as charitable. POD publishers often have a Distributed Market Department (DMD) - i.e. their authors. POD books are, therefore, unlikely to fly off the shelves. As a writer, it would be useful to get 'boned up' on this, and know the reasons why the local Waterstone's manager calls for security the instant he or she smells the faint, chloroformic odour of POD (cf. this old post of mine from early 2005).

By the way, in his article, Mr Keegan relates a visit to a company called Lightning Source. If you were to click on the cover graphic of Déjà Vu, to the right of this post, and order it from Amazon, Lightning Source will be the company that prints, binds, and lovingly wraps your copy.

World Book Day 2006

The Writer's Guild informs me that today is world book day.

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World Book Day 2006:

Just in case you didn't realise, today is World Book Day 2006.

World Book Day was designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and was marked in over 30 countries around the globe last year. The origins of the day we now celebrate in the UK and Ireland come from Catalonia, where roses and books were given as gifts to loved ones on St. George's Day − a tradition started some 80 years ago...A main aim of World Book Day is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own.

There's something quaint about roses and books. Perhaps I'll attempt a small restart of the tradition...

Technorati Tags: books, fiction

Swallowing One's Pride

Via Emerald City, I just came across this interesting post by Justine Larbalestier, who is a writer of feminist science fiction. She has been accused of overdoing the self-promotion lark, and that led her to consider where, exactly, falls the dividing line between an appropriate and inappropriate amount of self-promotion.

Any publisher or agent will tell you, these days, that the book selling business has changed. The idea of the writer churning out masterpieces from the comfort of his log cabin is laughable (the wrong type of 'laughable'). To be a successful writer you need to perform on cue. You need to be gregarious as necessity requires. Well, gregarious is not quite the correct word. But you need to be calm and witty during, for example, a radio interview that might be heard by a few thousand people. Or you'll do a panel at a conference, where you'll gab off about subjects tangentially related to your book and your expertise, in the hope of shifting a few copies of das Meisterwerk. In short, there is a great deal of stuff to do once the book is at the printer's.

What are my credentials on self-promotion? Well, you're reading this blog. I've also given radio interviews, a television interview, worked the crowds at a science fiction conference, and sent my book to people within the industry whose names would make good cover blurb (though another motivation for that last action is to find out what good writers thought of my book). I consider this is the bare minimum. I don't like self-promotion. If you had a conversation with me, you'd quickly notice that many of my attempts at humour are self-directed, and I develop a dislike for people who appear to have a high opinion of themselves.

Despite this, I have, like Justine Larbalestier (great name) been considered a rather energetic self-promoter, particularly among my fellow UKA Press authors. This is probably due in greater part to the effect of my activities than the activities themselves. A year ago last month, for example, my book was reviewed in the Guardian. That piece of dumb luck/achievement (which I thought might arrive with my fourth or fifth book, not my first) came my way because I read a book by Jon Courtenay Grimwood and decided he was good writer whose blurb could be useful on the jacket of my book. I sent him a copy of the book and forgot about the whole thing. It was only months later, and a couple of weeks before the Guardian review appeared, that I discovered Jon moonlighted as the Guardian's science fiction reviewer. All of the other 'marketing successes' I've had have been sim