There are a lot of amusing and beguiling collective nouns for creatures, such as a parliament of owls, a murder of crows, a charm of goldfinches, a clowder of cats, a kindle of kittens, a murmuration of starlings, a sloth of bears and an ambush of tigers.
Collective nouns for professions are less common, but they do exist. Should you have a group of butlers, they’d be known as a draught. Jurors are collectively known as a damning, while the rise of portrait painters in the Renaissance, who sometimes painted flattering representations of their wealthy clients, led to them being called a misbelief of painters. Personal relationships have resulted in less than happy collective nouns: a group of husbands is an unhappiness, while wives are an impatience.
After knuckling down to another campaign of querying recently, I found myself wondering about what to call writers, agents, publishers and readers en masse.
* Writers working alone—a loneliness.
* Rejected writers—a frustration.
* Traditionally published authors—a smugness.
* Self-published authors—a hopefulness…or maybe a defiance.
Although I’m not averse to reading positive stories, I’ve definitely got the typical British stoicism running through my veins: don’t complain, make the best of things and keep a stiff upper lip when motivating myself.
The problem with being long-suffering is that it turns into self-indulgent masochism. Keeping my nose to the grindstone might be virtuous, but with my sense of smell destroyed, I can longer appreciate how much my situation stinks! We all need immense amounts of patience to be writers but as George Jackson cautioned:
Patience has its limits. Take it too far and it’s cowardice.
I’m becoming increasingly impatient with the time it takes to interest literary agents in representing me to secure a traditional publishing contract, so am planning a return to self-publishing. To do so effectively means entering the hoopla of blogging, tweeting and posting on social media, which cuts into writing time.
Life is too much “Look at me…me, me, me” these days, with people getting momentary amusement from often meaningless twaddle. In selling myself as an author and marketing my books as commercial products, I hope to pen online content that entices readers prepared to devote time to my stories. I’m unsure how to do so.
I’ve been discussing various aspects of commerce with my best friend, who lives on the South Island of New Zealand. She runs a jewellery importation business, sourcing stock from Turkey and India, selling rings, bracelets and necklaces directly to customers at markets and through online ads. Trade is up and down, sometimes she does well, other times it’s a lot of effort for little profit.
Like me, she’s very determined/stubborn/tenacious, but, unlike me, she believes in a higher power. Not necessarily an all-powerful god, more tapping into a universal force that radiates benevolence when contacted. She does so through intention statements, writing down what it is she wants to achieve. She recently suggested that I do the same for my writing career.
My NZ friend sent me a book that she swears by. Although I’ve read a lot of self-help books, I opened the package with some trepidation.
There’s lots of talk of God, which would normally be a turn-off for me, but my friend advised me to not be put off by that (she’s not religious either), but to think instead of some other beloved deity—like my long-dead cat Pushkin—who ruled my life for a decade. I’ve read half of it so far. wincing a bit, while also thinking “That might work.” It’s well-written, drawing the reader in with lots of teases and hints and “aw shucks” humbleness to make it sound like they don’t know it all.
I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finish. To be honest, I can do with all of the positivity I can get. It’s hard to self-motivate, to carry on believing in me as an author and my books as commercial stories, when there’s no acceptance or real feedback from literary agents. Writing books that aren’t read reminds me of that conundrum about how if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one to hear it fall, does it make a noise? Do my books really exist without readers?
Just this morning, I came across a similar self-actualisation technique following a link in a writer’s newsletter to this article about vision letters.
As an experiment, I’ve tried writing out a list of intention statements, just five of them in a document on my desktop. I consult it from time to time—it’s almost like seeing a positive life coach version of me!
An article in today’s Guardian notes that in these troubled times, there’s been a rise in the sale of self-help books.
I recently read Philip Pullman’sLa Belle Sauvage, the first part of a trilogy called The Book Of Dust.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but was a little shocked at the number of swearwords—not because they didn’t fit the boy speaker’s way of expressing himself—more because of the likely age of most readers of the story.
I’m not so naïve that I think children don’t know how to swear, but there is a danger that normalising bad language in fiction will lead to overuse in day-to-day speech. Swearing isn’t always a bad thing, as this article points out.
I’ve only ever written poetry for young readers, none of which had anything ruder than the word ‘bum’ in it. With my crime novels for adult readers, I’m well aware that there should be a lot more swearing in the dialogue, were I going for verisimilitude, as coppers and criminals aren’t known for being genteel. Instead, I have my characters use swearing in times of stress.
Various famous children’s books have included swearing, such as David Almond’s Skellig, which caused his publishers to have a heated debate over his use of the word “bollocks”—they left them in! It could be argued that the use of swear words is age-sensitive when young readers are leaving childhood to become juveniles.
Censorship of anything is contentious, but should young readers’ books carry warning stickers if they contain swearing? Sometimes swearing is a key element in the story. In 2014, Brian Conaghan published When Mr. Dog Bites, which tells the story of a teenager with Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition the author knows well, as he suffers with it. Every swearword appears in the text, but in a realistic way and not done to be sensational.
If you write for children, how do you deal with swearing?
Do you make up swear words if you write Fantasy or Science Fiction?
Thirty rejections into my latest campaign of querying, I’m not feeling dejected at all, more puzzled by the phraseology that agents use in their form letters. I’m in the process of composing lyrics for a blues song from these phrases…things such as:
* ‘I didn’t feel passionately enough to take the novel further.’
* ‘We have evaluated your query and regrettably, your project is not a right fit for our agency.’
* ‘Please do not be disheartened by this reply and do not assume that we saw no merit in your work.‘
The strangest turn of phrase, which sounds vaguely nautical, was: ‘...your synopsis didn’t seem quite right for us. The comparatives you cited make this sound not in our wheelhouse.‘
This rejection alarmed me a bit, as the agency asked me to say where my style of writing fitted within the crime genre. As I’m writing a series, which features lots of characterisation and internal dialogue, with the landscape appearing as one of the characters, I chose Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke and Dennis Lehane, who all do these things. Seemingly, the literary agent doesn’t think much of these giants of crime writing.
Trying to work out what it is agents are looking for, is an act of divination comparable to examining the entrails of a slaughtered animal to work out the future.
Reading agents’ profiles on their agency employers and stalking them on Twitter and Facebook unearths such highfalutin wishes as:
* ‘I love big high concept stuff, psychological/domestic suspense that truly breaks the mould….’
* ‘She likes high concept hooks, books with an international appeal, quirky first-person narratives, historical novels with women at the forefront, and books which make her cry.’
* ‘Your book will be published for a number of reasons: it is a cracking good read, the writing is excellent, the timing for the subject matter is just right and the market is ready for your book.’
So, how do agents predict what will be commercial? And remember, they’re deciding what will sell in six months, at best…if it’s to be properly edited and formatted, given an effective cover and marketed in places that count.
Obviously, big news stories that are on people’s minds will affect which novels get published. It’s not hard to predict there’ll be stories about a mad president, the war against terrorism, border controls, climate change and the Illuminati.
But, how does an agent decide if your Regency Romance or Sci-Fi/Western mashup will be a big seller? Do they check sales figures for similar recently published books? Or, do they look for plots that mirror contemporary news events?
It would be good to know, for, after all, there’s little point in writing stories that are of limited interest (mainly you!): it’s not selling out to write something that’s popular, that achieves word of mouth chatter and which sells thousands of copies.
(I sound like I’m attempting self-hypnosis!)
What I’m describing is a book that’s achieved discoverability, which is the nut to crack for success. What is it about your story that makes it stand out? Increasingly, publishers are looking towards A.I. to predict which book will excite readers—cutting out the middle man—literary agents. This report contains some startling statistics and its assertions about using metadata to monitor readers’ tastes are believable.
If A.I. does take over, I can see literary agents becoming more like book doulas guiding the birth of a book, advising which is the best option to take for publishing it.
This no-nonsense advice about writing, querying, literary agents and being published, from Delilah S. Dawson on Chuck Wendig’s website Terrible Minds is worth a read.
Do you have any idea how literary agents work?
Have you been well-guided by an agent to improve your manuscript?
Or, did an agency hamper you?
Do you feel like you’re being made to jump through unnecessary hoops, and that it would be simpler to self-publish?
Two days after turning officially old, following my 65th birthday in February, I came across a writing competition that reassures me that I’m actually ‘Ageless’.
Mind you, there have been a few debut authors of mature years, such as Mary Wesley, 71, when her first adult novel was published), Tim Finch (debut at 51), Diana Athill (memoir published in her early 80s), Penelope Fitzgerald (60, when her first novel was published) and Kit de Waal was 56, when her award-winning novel My Name is Leonwas published.
In my latest querying campaign, I’ve approached 88 literary agencies and several indies and digital publishers, each time contacting specific agents best suited for my crime novels, none of whom are as old as me. A couple look young enough to be my grandchildren—I own belts older than them!
Researching the success stories of their recently-signed clients, I found just one 64-year-old debut novelist. Having said that, my new source of inspiration is James Oswald, who initially found success for his crime series by self-publishing, before signing to Penguin Books for a six-figure deal at the age of 45.
He still runs a cattle and sheep farm, and I enjoy reading the newsletters from his blog, telling of how he juggles tending livestock with writing and promoting his latest title. He comes across as a nice man, hard-working and humble.
If you’re of mature ageless years, there are a couple of writers’ groups of interest:
I finished reading Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage last night, in which a benign witch called Tilda Vasara makes a timely appearance. She casts a spell of invisibility that cloaks two child protagonists, and the baby they’re protecting, meaning their pursuers can’t see them. Tilda only sticks around for four pages, but her presence influenced my dreaming.
Trapped in a tedious dream about filing and form filling, undoubtedly caused by sending off four queries to fussy literary agents that evening, I was thrilled to see the witch from His Dark Materials trilogy, Serafina Pekkala fly into view. She appeared as played by actress Eva Green in the film adaptation, which was a bonus, but stayed for only a moment, saying “It’ll soon be over,” before zooming off on her broomstick. I presume she was referring to querying, which I should finish tonight.
It was nice to see one of my fictional crushes, and it made me think about which other fictional female characters I fancy.
Lisbeth Salander, from the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson is a wildly unconventional anti-hero, a mix of vulnerability and sociopathy. Not an easy person to be around, she might well scare the living daylights out of me!
Lastly and less frighteningly, is Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd.
She’s passionate and spirited and beguiling. Her determined independence is attractive—not just to me—I’ve known several recently-divorced women who chose her as a role model.
As for my man crush, it’d be Aragorn, from The Lord Of The Rings, as played by Viggo Mortensen in the films. He’d better be gentle with me!
In my own writing, my crush would be for a character called Alice from a novella called Is It Her?, who only appears in retrospect, mainly through the memories of her husband who accompanied her to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for an assisted suicide to end her suffering from cancer. She also makes herself felt through a loving and practical email she’d time-delayed to be delivered a month into her husband’s widowhood. I imagined her looking like the actress Patricia Clarkson.
How about you?
Who’s your crush?
If they’ve appeared in a film adaptation, were they well cast?
After going through a fallow period with reading matter borrowed from my local library, I recently hit pay dirt by finding some of my favourite authors’ books just sitting there on the shelf, waiting for me to come along!
Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvageand the latest story in Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series The Overnight Kidnapperare like settling down to catch up with old friends. I was also fortunate to find a novelist new to me, Amanda Coplin, whose debut The Orchardistis superbly written—likely to be one of my favourite reads of 2019.
Thus furnished with good reading, I’m time travelling to an alternative Oxford, 21st-century Sicily and the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th-century. It makes me feel sorry for people who don’t read.
Laying abed last night, I wondered who’d influenced the authors I was reading and if they’d had a writing mentor. Mentorship requires a good match of personalities, some reciprocity where the guidance is given in an appropriate manner. All the same, you might learn some harsh lessons, so it would be wise to pick someone whose wisdom you trust.
For the purposes of this fantasy, I’ve chosen mentors who I esteem, but also who I think I’d get on with; there are some authors I like who I’d probably fall out with if I met them—for all sorts of reasons, including morality, drug use and politics.
I recently re-read John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and apart from being surprised at how short it is (163 Pages), what struck me about it, was the structure. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained short story. Some chapters feature characters who don’t appear anywhere else in the story. There’s some overlap from chapter to chapter, such as towards the end, when the hoboes plan a surprise party for Doc, but wind up destroying his laboratory then find ways to make amends
A novel composed of a series of individual short stories with interconnected characters is properly called a short story cycle.
Cannery Row isn’t really a short story cycle, but the loosely connected vignettes offering an overview of the myriad picaresque characters makes the reader guess how they’ll interact when they meet the next time.
A noted example of the style is Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, in which the characters are linked by location but don’t form a cohesive novel. Published 100 years ago, in 1919, it’s oddly prescient in how it describes the continuing problem of individuals trying to overcome loneliness caused by living in a modern town.
Its twenty-two stories are disconcerting to read, as you briefly enter the lives of characters who express thoughts about identity and fitting into society that we all have.
More recently, Quentin Tarantino created a popular short story cycle with the Hollywood film Pulp Fiction, in which several stories intertwine even though they’re out of chronological order.
I read Elizabeth Strout’sOlive Kitteridge last year, in which the title character, a retired school teacher, is the axis around which the residents of a coastal town in Maine revolve. Her presence is always felt, even if she doesn’t feature very much in each chapter which functions as a self-contained story.
Such influences made me consider how I organise my own novels. In the latest, completed last autumn, there are several chapters featuring only one character going about their business, with plenty of internal dialogue: my protagonist detective takes time out from a murder investigation, to decompress by visiting the Tate Saint Ives; an ageing prostitute contemplates her clients, while wondering how to move on a stolen painting for enough money to retire; a cat burglar has similar dreams, as he cases a mansion he intends to rob, while imagining life as a charter fisherman in the Mediterranean.
I wanted to convey how, when lives collide, the characters’ motivations aren’t what they appear to be on the surface. A reader empathising with a character is more engaged than with a cardboard cut-out figure going through the motions in a predictable way.
Multiple points-of-view in a novel usually allows a writer to show different characters’ perspective on a story that unites them, but there’s something about penning a short story cycle which creates a disorienting effect in the reader (and maybe the writer) as the characters can be looking in different directions and are not necessarily there to serve a central theme.
I imagine this vagueness could annoy some readers, who prefer a focused approach to storytelling, but when writing a series of novels featuring the same principal characters, with minor support characters passing through, detailing individual tales could add to the impact.
I might try this approach with my next novel.
What do you think?
Plotter or pantser, how do you string a story together?
Crowdfunding for all sorts of projects has been around for a long time. Two of the best-known companies are Kickstarterand Indiegogo.
For getting books into print, the main player is Unbound.
One thing I’ve noticed about Unbound, is that the proposals that achieve their target funding are often peculiar and rather esoteric—unlikely to excite thousands of readers.
I’ve considered approaching them a couple of times but figured that my crime genre novels were too conformist and mainstream. Having said that, I’ve been querying recently, using the fifth story in the series, whose plot one agent rejected as being “too outlandish.” Maybe I should put some spin on it, exaggerating the sex scenes, bizarre murders and opium taking to entice sponsors of kinky books.
As with any commercial enterprise, there are some dodgy dealers around, claiming to be what they’re really not. I came across this troubling report about Publishizer, who boast they’re the first Crowdfunding Literary Agency.
As the old adage goes:‘If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.’
Yup, got me covered!
