Improbability

I'm currently reading The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farell which I've been enjoying until...There I am, reading away when, whoosh, she's gone too far and put in something improbable. It shot me out of the book world and into the cold reality of my world. It wasn't a nice feeling at all.

I'm back reading again, but with a wary eye. Will she do something unbelievable again? In a strange way, I now distrust the author, and the wonderful suspension of disbelief has vanished.

It's a funny thing, the contract between author and reader. We give them our time, and they give us another world for a few hours. Seems a good swap to me, and it's what I certainly want from a book, that sense of being absorbed into somewhere else, someone else.

But the relationship is fragile. A clumsy phrase can break it, a thoughtless shift in point of view, an improbability. The writer in me knows why she's done it - on a practical level she needed to shift the story to the next phase and didn't want to spend more time on the build up - but without the build-up it's improbable, and - there - she's lost me.

That's why your first three chapters need to be as perfect as possible. There must be no impediments along the way of getting the reader absorbed into your world. You want the reader to be reluctantly dragged away from the world of your book. Typos fret us. Grammatical errors do it too. The relationship is at its most fragile at the beginning.

I'll be carrying on with Esme Lennox because the improbability has come in the middle. I've already invested quite a lot of time in this relationship; I'll see it out to the end. But earlier on? That's when books get discarded.

E-Publishing

You'd think from some of the sites that e-publishing was a universal panacea. Writers are going to overthrow conventional publishers and take control of their own careers and income streams.

There's no doubt that epublishing has become a cheaper, easier and simpler form of publishing compared to conventional print methods. No worries about distribution or holding stock, for example. But the two fundamental problems associated with ALL publishing are still there:

1. How do you let people know about the book?

and

2. How do you make them buy it?

Neither of these things are as easy as you'd think. Yes, letting people know is easier now there's social networking and yes, you may be lucky and things go viral, reaching out to millions at the click of a button. But they've still got to buy it. Try an experiment. How many books have been brought to your attention over the last week. And how many did you actually buy?

I must have had over a hundred books pass before me, some of them by people I personally know, and I haven't bought a single one. I buy a lot of books, but right now my To Be Read pile is already stacked high and I'm on a book diet. But whatever the reason, people do not buy every book they see or read about - common sense should tell us that. They buy...1%? I wouldn't be surprised if it was 0.01%. The method of publication makes not difference. Getting people to actually put their hands in their pockets and fork out their cash is hard work.

Books aren't like music downloads. How long does it take to listen to a single track? 3 minutes? 5? And how long to read a book? Several hours at least for most people, if not more. Even if people like the idea of your book they still might not buy it because they haven't the time to read it.

All the successful epublishing stories come from writers who either have previously established readerships or are publishing non-fiction - just the same as with print self publishing success stories. And yes, there are writers who have epublished and gone on to land deals with conventional publishing houses, but I wonder why - if their epublishing venture was so successful - they want a print deal? I'd make a guess it's because book marketing is hard work and unbelievably time consuming.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against self publishing - I've done it myself and with the right project would happily do it again. But just because the technology of publishing has moved on, it doesn't mean that the basic principles of selling books have changed:

How do you get people to know about your book, and how do you get them to buy it?

Prizes and Sales

A recent article in the Bookseller reported on the sales push winning prizes gave books. Some of the quantities are surprising - for example...

"Last year's winner of the overall Book of the Year, Christopher Reid's A Scattering (Arete), has sold 12,700 copies to date. The previous recipient of the award, Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture(Faber), has sold 376,00 copies to date across all editions."

But then if you investigate a little further, it turns out that A Scattering is a collection of poems, and poetry collections do not sell well, even if they are the Costa Book of the Year.

Prizes are lovely to win (so I've been told) and sales pay the bills, and you can't take everything you read in the press at face value.

Organising Your Life Story

William Boyd was writing in The Telegraph a few weeks ago about the process of adapting his novel Any Human Heart for television. He decided that the novel, written as intimate journals, was too interior to transfer directly to the screen so instead he decided to re-order it by the women that the protagonist, Logan Mountstuart, had loved. First Time, First Love, The Rebound, The Love of His Life and so on.

I was thinking that might be an interesting way of organising ones own life story, though it might be a bit less eventful than Logan Mountstuart's. I've seen people organise their story through shoes - first bootees, school shoes, tennis shoes, high heels, sensible shoes, wellies, slippers?

Memoir doesn't always have to be chronological. It can be thematic. These are the headings from Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie:

First Light, First Names, Village School, The Kitchen, Grannies in the Wainscot, Public Death, Private Murder, Mother, Winter and Summer, Sick Boy, The Uncles, Outings and Festivals, First Bite at the Apple, Last Days.

It's fun to write a list of how you'd organise your life. Mine would be in books, starting with Hairy McClairy and A Little White Horse. What about you?

The Perfect Writing Process

I've told several people this over the last few days, and they've reacted as if they've been given the secrets of the universe, so I thought I'd do a blog post on it. It's very simple:

There are no extra marks given for your writing process, all that matters is the finished product.

You can write 2000 words every day, including birthdays and Christmas.

You can write in splurges, 10,000 words this weekend, but nothing until next month.

You can write one perfect sentence at a time.

You can write mad and messy drafts which make no sense.

You can write two drafts to get to the finished product. Or twenty two.

You can write in an office.

You can write in bed.

You can write on a laptop.

You can write by hand.

You can write reclining on a chaise longue dictating your masterpiece to an amanuensis while drinking champagne and eating chocolates.

None of it makes any difference to whether the final work is something someone else might want to read. It really doesn't matter how you get there. The perfect writing process is the one that's perfect for you.

Happiness as a Writer

I caught Sister Wendy on television the other day. For those of you who don't remember, she is a nun who had an unlikely hit with a television series about art, ooh, ten years ago? She was wonderful enthusiastic and unselfconscious, but didn't like the limelight or being a celebrity and retreated back to her life as a hermit in a caravan in the grounds of a convent.

I don't know why exactly she was on television when I saw her - I'd put the television on to catch the weather forecast - but I listened to her briefly. Her young and shiny interviewers obviously couldn't believe that a person who'd been famous could be happy now they were out of the limelight.

'Oh yes,' Sister Wendy said, beaming rapturously. 'Happiness is concentrating on something you believe matters.'

How true.

It doesn't matter what it is. Making a meal for the family, playing the piano, working out at the gym. And writing. I believe writing matters, and I'm never happier than when I'm absorbed by it. With all the ups and downs, the disappointments and successes, writing is endlessly fascinating, endlessly absorbing. Writing makes me happy. I hope it does you too.

What Really Happens with the Slush Pile

The other day I was chatting to a young man about publishing. He revealed he'd spent the summer going through the slush pile of a local publishing house. I asked him what he'd learned from the experience. His response?

1. That many of the entries were written by people who were simply mad.

2. That many entries hadn't thought about who might want to read the material, which was far to personal to be of more general interest.

3. That it was truly incredible how many people sent in manuscripts without any thought for the suitability of the publisher for their work.

4. That it was daft to have a 20 year old judging manuscripts with a view to possible publication.

I actually found that rather cheering. It means that a literate writer who decides to get published and bothers to do their homework re publishers, presentation etc will actually stand out. And I'm not too bothered by the 20 year old bit - he was a sensitive and intelligent young man who had the wit not to dismiss the work out of hand because it didn't immediately appeal to him. If anything, he gave the impression that he'd conscientiously worked hard to overcome any age related bias.

Overall, it's better to have an agent than go through the slush pile, but take heart - if your manuscript is well presented, it should stand out and at least make it to the next round.