Write tip: don't put your feet on the seat

My return to blogging here and my determination to keep two blogs going simultaneously led to me mis-scheduling one on my other blog last week. Here it is:

My writing tip this week is taken from a long-ago post, but bears (not bares) repeating. It was inspired, as my thoughts so often are, by a train journey.

Please bear in mind that this was a gorgeous evening in Scotland, so I was unsurprised to see something like this:



Or, this (please excuse the flies on the window):



Or, for those of you who appreciate the wonderful engineering of the Forth Rail Bridge, this:



Clearly, I did see those things, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to photograph them. However, it was difficult to see or focus on those views because of this:



These are the feet of a tourist who I think had been doing a lot of walking. (The clue was the blisters, which you can’t see.) The feet are not pleasant, nor are they appropriate things to put on a seat which I might one day have to sit on. They did not enhance my journey at all. They served only the pure self-indulgence of their owner. If you could have seen them as closely as I did, you would have noticed many unpleasant details about them.

Now, I have a reputation for making my many negative travelling experiences tell a story or make a point of vague relevance to my blog. This is no exception. In fact, I have four points to make, all to illustrate an important aspect of writing.

1. Whereas that woman entirely failed to consider what those around her wanted to see, you should, when writing, think of the story you are telling. If the story does not benefit from something, leave it out. (Or in the case of feet, don’t get them out at all.)
2. Do not be self-indulgent as a writer: that woman was thinking only of her feet and her own comfort. You do not have that luxury. You have a job to do, and that includes keeping your reader.
3. Be appropriate. This does not mean that your book may not contain horrible / gruesome / outrageous things, or even bare feet, only that they should only be there when they should be there. That woman was perfectly entitled to remove her shoes, just not there and not then. The art of the writer is to know exactly what word or what detail to reveal and to know how and when.
4. When you include something inappropriate or ill-considered in your writing, you detract from the surrounding beauty of your language. You wreck the view. Don’t do it.

Dear silly writer

At least once a week, I get an email from someone asking for free advice. I don't just mean someone asking a favour; or someone asking a simple question; I mean someone saying, for example, "Hi! I've written a book. Can you give me some advice about getting published?" Bearing in mind that this blog and my books are FULL of such advice, my internal responses to these emails are not really fit for publication. My actual response is usually something hopelessly mild, usually written after half an hour of redrafting so that I don't upset the irritating person.

These people make me crabbit.

This is a message for all of them, specifically the one who just emailed me.

Dear Silly Person Who Really Has Not Thought,
Thank you for your rambling email telling me the inspiration for your book of poems (complete with 79 photos) and for so fully appraising me of your life story. You ask whether I have any advice for you about getting published.

In fact, yes, I do. I have this blog, where, for well over three years, I have slaved and sweated, bringing advice about every single aspect of publishing and writing. All the advice is free. I have written Write to be Published, over which I slaved and sweated for more hours than you can imagine and for which I received no advance. The price is £8.99 but you can even get it cheaper than that in certain places, and nine months later I will receive around 35p. I have also written Write a Great Synopsis, although frankly it does not sound as though you are quite at that stage yet. And in a couple of weeks you will even be able to buy Dear Agent, which will give you even more detail about approaching agents and publishers.

Oh, you mean, of course, that you want individual advice? Advice that will take me several hours to prepare, not including reading your waffly email before we even get started.

The thing is, you are entirely wrapped up in yourself. You have not properly looked at my blog, although I know that's how you found me. You have not taken the trouble to discover how phenomenally busy I am. You have not stopped to consider how exactly I am supposed to give you my individual time and my knowledge and not be paid.

And more importantly than that, you have not realised that the world will not stop spinning if your book never gets published. The world won't stop spinning if my next book never gets published, either. We are all dispensible. There are plenty more writers where you and I came from. Being published is not a right.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

Go away and read and write and think and engage your brain. The advice is all here for you.

And leave me alone. I'm trying to write and I'm trying to help sensible people.

Spinach, strawberries, and the Society of Authors Children's Literacy Campaign

"Reading for pleasure" is a phrase we hear a lot. It's become a bit of a cliché and the real problem with clichés is that we stop thinking about their meaning. They lose their power.

The other problem with the phrase is that "pleasure" often implies less importance or worth. It implies that perhaps we shouldn't do too much of it, that we should make sure we've done the "work" parts of our reading before we deserve the "pleasure" parts. Reading for pleasure seems somehow more frivolous, epicurean, than reading for benefit, information, work.

It is not; and we fall into some dangerous traps if we think so. Reading for pleasure should come first. It is essential to reading at all. Let me explain.

Once, each of us had to learn to read. We were very young when we had to learn this activity which is difficult, unnatural, and for which we are not, in fact, evolutionarily programmed. There is no part of the brain which is "for" reading, though there are parts which are involved in the separate skills which reading requires. (See Maryanne Woolf's fascinating Proust and the Squid for details about the evolutionary aspects of reading in our brains.)

You cannot get small children to do something just because it's good for them. It has to be pleasurable. We need many hours practice to learn something so complex, and we simply will not get children to put in the hours if they don't enjoy it. Many children enjoy reading immediately because they find it easy immediately. Those children will sail through learning to read because they don't even notice they are learning: they are having too much pleasure. (Including the pleasure they derive from the act of succeeding itself.)

Other children, with differently wired brains - and remember that since our brains are not wired for reading we all have to "borrow" brain cells and connections from certain brain parts in order to find ways to reading success - will find it harder. They will experience early failure. Show me an adult, let alone a child, who finds pleasure in failure. 

For these children, being told they must read this text because it's good for them, because it's part of schoolwork, because they need to skills to succeed in life, will go no way towards them ever enjoying, and therefore ever adequately practising, the act of reading. They are being offered medicine, instead of food. Hard work instead of enjoyment.

By the time these children are around eight years old, they have seen their friends learn to read easily and wondered why they can't. They have discovered that they "can't", or at least can't easily or well. They now enjoy it even less and probably not at all. They switch off, find other ways to shine, and sometimes the way to shine is to become the naughty child, the disruptive one, the one that the other children love to watch getting into trouble. Or they hide. They retreat into a shell inside which every effort goes into avoiding reading.

Initiatives by schools and governments to get them reading will have absolutely no positive effect if the focus isn't reading for pleasure. You can thrust the exercises and worksheets at them, you can drag them to a reading session for ten minutes every lunchtime, you can even fill the library with books and make them sit in it, but if reading for pleasure is not the whole focus - the WHOLE focus - you might as well chuck the money and the effort and the books into the sea. Because they will not practise for the required number of hours. It's that simple.

This is why I talk about spinach and strawberries. Both are good for us. When we eat spinach, even if we also like it (as I do), we still eat it with a sense of "This is good for me. Its health benefits are more obvious than the pleasure of its taste." When we eat strawberries (or any other fruit you happen to love better), we don't do so thinking about the health benefits, merely about the fact that we enjoy the taste.

That's what reading should be like. Reading is fantastically "good" for us but we shouldn't be thinking about that when we do it. And, most crucially, we should NOT, please, please, please, offer reading to children as some kind of medicinal or healthy activity, even if, like spinach, it is. We should offer it purely as enjoyable. And our whole aim should be to find a book that a child will enjoy reading.

Because otherwise, why would he do it?

That's why I support, with all my heart and with the loudest voice I have, the children's literacy campaign by the Society of Authors.

That's why I recently agreed, proudly, to be one of the new Ambassadors for Dyslexia Scotland, at the invitation of Sir Jackie Stewart, who knows all too well what it is like to go through school feeling a failure because of failure to learn one thing: how print works.

That is why I write for young people.

And that is why I'm proud to write not books but strawberries. Because I know strawberries are good for you but I only want you to think of the taste.

I will be talking more about this in Glasgow on June 16th, where I'm doing the keynote speech for a conference aimed at parents who want to know more about reading and how to encourage it. Do come!

OPEN LETTER FROM THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE BOOK

I know this blog is about how to get published but if there are fewer libraries and librarians there will be fewer readers for your books when they are published. Therefore, campaigning for libraries is what I will continue to do. I blogged the other day about my anger. Now, I am copying below the Open Letter to Members of Parliament, Jeremy Hunt  and Ed Vaizey, Ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. This letter was organised by Alan Gibbons, author and founder of the Campaign for the Book. The letter is signed by hundreds of authors and authors and Alan has only been able to include a proportion of the names. He has given me permission to broadcast it here, too.

Please do what you can to spread this message as widely as possible.

Open letter to Jeremy Hunt MP and Ed Vaizey MP, Ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport

Dear Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey,

Library users and staff across the country are increasingly concerned at the implications of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Over 250 library closures have been announced. Some, for example those in Oxfordshire and Lewisham, are in areas involved in the pilot of the Future Libraries Programme which promised: “A strong library service, based around the needs of local people, can play a key role in our ambitions to build the Big Society by providing safe and inclusive spaces for people to read, learn and access a range of community services.”

When the then Secretary of State Andy Burnham hesitated over halting Wirral’s attempted closure of half its libraries just over a year ago, Ed Vaizey said: "If Andy Burnham is not prepared to intervene when library provision is slashed in a local authority such as the Wirral, it is clear that he is ignoring his responsibilities as secretary of state.” Andy Burnham did, of course, change his mind under pressure after several months.

Now cuts approaching the scale of those in the Wirral are being repeated across the country, not only in Oxfordshire and Lewisham, but in Buckinghamshire, Nottinghamshire, Leeds, Brent, Gloucestershire and many, many more. Ed Vaizey has written to councils reminding them of their duty under the 1964 Libraries and Museums Act to provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ service.

It is becoming commonplace for councils to close up to half their library branch networks. It would be inconsistent if the DCMS did not superintend councils acting as unjustifiably as Wirral, preventing the slashing of services.

We call on the DCMS not to ignore its responsibilities. We ask you to act in the spirit of the 1964 Act and prevent councils inflicting cuts which amount to cultural vandalism.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Gibbons

Organiser, the Campaign for the Book

The following authors, illustrators, poets, publishers, librarians, teachers, journalists, agents, screenwriters, translators, film producers and general readers have signed the petition:
Philip Pullman
Kate Mosse
Michael Holroyd
Peter Dickinson OBE
Barry Cryer, comedian and writer
Robin McKinlay
Carol Ann Duffy
Bonnie Greer
Gillian Slovo
Maureen Freely
Kathy Lette “Closing our libraries will make us a nation of numbskulls – the Illiterati.” Kathy Lette.
Julia Donaldson
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Michael Rosen
Barrie Cunningham OBE
Jackie Kay
Kwei Armah
Malorie Blackman
Beverley Naidoo
Darren Shan
Geraldine McCaughrean
Joan Bakewell
Terry Jones
Lisa Appignanesi, President English PEN
Susan Barry and Marlene Johnson, Hachette Children’s Books
Danuta Kean, Deputy Director, Creative Enterprise Centre, School of Arts, Brunel University
Mark Le Fanu, Society of Authors
Professor Stuart Hall
Simon Brett
Howard Schuman
Anne Chisholm, Chair, Royal Society of Literature
Tricia Adams, Director, School Library Association
Biddy Fisher, Cilip President
Hannah Plom, Hon Secretary, Cilip YLG
Rebecca Hemming, Chair, Cilip SLG
Duncan Wright, School Librarian of the Year, 2010
Moris Farhi MBE
Leonie Flynn
Ruth Goldsmith
Gillian Cross
Matt Whyman
Joanna Briscoe
Caroline Rance
Christine Athey
Melanie Worsfold
Anne Anderson
Mavis Cheek
Zoe Allinson
Dr Jessie Hey
Pie Corbett
Melvin Burgess
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Nicola Morgan
Tim Bowler
Adele Geras
Christine Blower, General Secretary, National Union of Teachers
Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary, NUT
Robert Swindells
Brenda Swindells
Jamila Gavin
Tony Bradman
David Nicholls
James Carter
Celia Rees
Susan Shaper, Cilip’s SLG committee
Anne Cassidy
Nick Arnold
Meg Rosoff
Catherine Johnson
Chrissie Gittins
Philip Ardagh
Sridhar Gowda
Geraldin Rose.
Jeremy Strong
Korky Paul
Elizabeth Kay
Tommy Donbavand
Sue Eves
Penny Dolan
Sally Nicholls
Linda Newbery
M G Harris
David Bedford
Rhiannon Lassiter
Bali Rai
Gwen Grant
Kathryn Evans
Julie Wilkie
Emma Slack
Jane Ray
Chris Priestley
Anne Rooney
Lindsey Fraser
Celia Rees
Anna Perera
Sally Prue
Lynn Breeze
Bernard Ashley
Steve Weatherill
Helena Pielichaty
Julia Jarman
Berlie Doherty
Andrew Fusek Peters
Steve Skidmore
David Belbin
Saviour Pirotta
John Foster
Prue Goodwin
Kay Green, Earlyworks Press
Mary Hoffman
Alec Williams
Peter Cox, Litopia
Sue Barrow
Ian Bland
Vanessa Harbour, Editor, Write4Children
Sally Kincaid, Divisional Secretary, Wakefield and District NUT
John Illingworth, former president NUT
Barry Conway, Secretary, Bolton NUT
Ian Harris, Secretary Wirral NUT
Mick Wattam, Doncaster UCATT treasurer
Jim Board, Secretary, Doncaster Unison
Ian Leaver, Secretary NUT Leicester
Jenny Day, President NUT Leicester
Peter Flack, Assistant Secretary NUT Leicester
Andy Reeve, Secretary Leicestershire NUT
Bernard Harper, President, Leicester and District Trades Council
Caroline Horn, Director, Reading Zone
Nikki Gamble, Write Away
Michael Thorn, ACHUKA
Jane Hunt
Lynn Huggins-Cooper
Tony Mitton
AND MANY HUNDREDS MORE

SOAP-BOX: ME ON DISGRACEFUL POLITICIANS

I don't see why I should allow other people to have a soap-box spot on my blog if I can't do it myself. So, here goes. And beware: I'm angry.

Got my Oxfam gift catalogue recently. Bought a few things for some people I know who don't need anything bought for them and are delighted to have something bought on their behalf for people in places where they really do need things.

One of the more expensive things in the Oxfam catalogue is a library, which you can buy to help lift people in developing countries out of poverty. Because libraries are the mark of development, of self-esteem, of open minds, of growth, of strength and of humanity.

Which makes it all the more sickening, grotesque and ignorant that our politicians, in our so-called developed country, are closing libraries. They call it economic. It's not economic. We can afford libraries. We must afford libraries. No, this is not economic; it's political. It's stupid, too.

Only someone with a closed mind closes libraries. Or, perhaps, someone so ignorant, so arrogant, that he thinks that everyone can buy books. Or that "it's all on the internet, innit?"

No, it's not all on the internet. It's all in books. And minds. And without books, minds are empty.

So, Mr Cameron, Mr Vaizey, and all you other foolish, empty-minded, treacherous politicos: don't rob us of our libraries, because in doing so you show nothing but your own ignorance.

______________________________

Please, everyone, don't let this happen. Blog and rant about libraries and cuts. Write to politicians. I did last night. And if you know people who have already blogged, please put links to them in the comments below. I'll then transfer them into this post.

Here we go:

Join Alan Gibbons' Campaign for the Book Facebook page
Notes From the Slush-Pile
KM Lockwood- an open letter
Philip Ardagh writing on FB
Lucy Coats at Scribble City Central
Keren David on Almost True
A librarian here
See if you have a local campaign group here
Jo Cannon here

MEANINGS AND CONTROL

I am away this week so I am taking the easy option by drawing your attention to a relevant post on my Wasted blog here.

As well as the points I make there, about control, power and the themes of Wasted, I find it interesting and important how very often readers will take meanings that are different from those we intended.

We mustn't be upset by that. I'm certainly not.

Only a very shallow book would have only one meaning. Only a shallow writer would have such a simple theme that there was no room for the reader's mind to go down some different paths of thought, because if a book has rich characters those characters will have rich minds, and, when readers enter those minds properly, they will live those lives beyond the pages of the book.

The deeper the book, the more opportunities for readers to take different interpretations. On the other hand, if many readers took the completely opposite meaning from the writer's intended one, either the writer would have failed to express the meaning properly, or the wrong readers would have found the book.

Once the book is out there, however, it belongs to the readers as much as to the writer and we must give up control.

After all, without readers there would be no book, and therefore no meaning at all.

So, I worship at the feet of readers. Even when they get it wrong!

THIS WEEK, I'm in London, talking at Bishop Challoner's School about Wasted, and then speaking at a conference in Berkshire about young people and risk-taking. I should also be writing, and if I don't I will be behind on a certain deadline and Emma at Snowbooks would be cross with me. So, I probably won't be able to do much commenting, but I will be watching you. I am always watching you.

THE END IS NIGH

I recently tackled how to begin your story and now blog-reader Sleepycatt wants me to tackle endings. What you all don't realise is that middles are the really tricky bit: we must work very hard to avoid saggy middles. I think it's the chocolate and sitting down all day hunched over our keyboards what does it.

Telling you about endings is easy. Writing them is easy too. You just put "THE END" and go and lie down in a darkened room to prepare for the party.

Obviously, it's the bit just before you write those magic words, THE END, that's so fraught with worry. There are two reasons for this:

1. Readers are most annoying. Some of them want happy endings; others aren't satisfied if there's even one character left alive. Some want everything neatly tied up; others want to wonder. Some like mystery; others wanted it crystal-clear. Some aren't even satisfied with an ending: they want an epilogue too, greedy sods. 
2. If you've written a good book, your reader is seriously narked that it's finished. Especially if your bloody publisher has gone and filled the last few pages with adverts for other books, some of which may not even be yours, and your reader had thought there was at least another chapter to go. So, your pissed off reader is going to be pissed off whatever ending you do.

In view of both these things, there is only one sensible general point to make about endings:

Do what feels right for your book - someone's going to hate you, whatever you do, so just do it, shut your eyes and get over it. Stay loyal to your book and, for once, sod the readers. Normally, I say think of your readers first, but in relation to endings there is no point in thinking of them. Every book I've written has had people who loved the book but wished the ending had been different. And others who loved the ending. What you don't usually get is people who hated the book and loved the ending: so, do it for your book, not your readers.

However, you wouldn't want me to stop there, so let me offer some specific points to consider. Please file them away in your head and consider them only if you are genuinely having a problem with your ending, and then only obey them in as far as they help your book. Your book is the boss.

AGE and GENRE MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Certain types of book tend to require different types of ending. Books for children [as opposed to YA] require greater optimism, clarity and resolution. Books for teenagers are more open to a variety of endings but you'd still be unlikely to get away with a very gloomy ending. With adult genres, as well as children's writing, you must be an expert in your genre so that you know what type of ending is usual in that genre. [Break rules if you want to, but know the rules first.] More "literary" fiction is, by its nature, much more open to esoteric and risky approaches, but any lit fic writer who needs general advice on endings probably isn't ready to write the middle either!

SOME RESOLUTION IS ESSENTIAL

Although not every thread has to be tied up neatly, you can't leave strands completely flailing in the wind. The reader needs to know that you haven't forgotten a character on the edge of a cliff. So, let's say you don't need a neat ending, but you do need the reader to feel that at least some good degree of resolution and partial closure has been reached. Even if you are leaving the way for a sequel, it should be apparent that the sequel will involve new adventures for the characters, not simply a completion of the ones you should have completed here. After all, your sequel may be a couple of years away, or never happen at all.

Your book deserves a proper ending, even if your readers disagree what that ending is.

IT'S ALL ABOUT SHAPE AND STRUCTURE

An ending should round the book off. When it comes, it should feel as though this is where the book was leading all the time, even if the reader didn't see it coming until a little while before. It has to feel like part of the book, rounding it off as though it's what you, the writer, intended all along in a controlled planning kind of a way, even if your planning is no more controlled than mine [which is not very].

THE LEAD-UP IS IMPORTANT

By the time the reader reaches the end, big surprises are not necessary, though twists in the tail are fun if handled correctly. There should be a sense of things coming to an ending, of threads being pulled together in advance and not all at the same time. Your book does not end in the last chapter: it has begun to end before then, which is all part of shape and structure.

I LIKE SECOND-ENDINGS

Second-endings are a bit like epilogues and are sometimes offered as such. They feel something like a sigh of relief, a bow at the end of a performance, a wave goodbye, the follow-through of a golf swing, even an encore after a well-received concert. The work is done, the threads are tied as much as they're going to be, but there's something else you'd like to say, something that you think the book and the reader deserve. An example of a book where I did this and which seemed to hit the mark with readers was Deathwatch. It may make you cry, because you'd forgotten about this minor character, but there he is, and you're glad to see him again, and how he says goodbye seems very fitting. Thinking about it, I've done second-endings in Fleshmarket, The Highwayman's Curse, The Passionflower Massacre and Sleepwalking, too. This could be a habit.

DO NOT CHEAT YOUR READERS

Your readers have expectations. That's why they've spent hours following your characters. Although some of them won't like the ending, and may hate you, I don't think it's fair to cheat them, if for no other reason that you might quite like them to read your next book. Waking up and finding it's all a dream is a cheat [and a cliché] and there are many other ways in which I hope you won't cheat your reader. But do it if you want to - if it's right for your book.

ON THE OTHER HAND...

I have just done the ultimate cop-out. My next book, Wasted, which is about risk and chance, has two endings. The difference between the two is enormous - life or death, though it's not as simple as that - but the difference hangs on the thinnest knife-edge, the equivalent of Schrodinger's Cat, which is another theme of the book. But, before you get to read them, you have to toss a coin to determine which is the actual ending. So, if you don't like the ending, don't blame me: blame the coin...

That's the end from me. So, to round off, say good-bye and prepare you nicely for THE END:
There are so many vocal and widely-read people who read this blog that I'm sure there will be a plethora of comments and views of "endings I have loved and hated". I think that would be great - it will point you all in the directions of endings to inspire or warn you. But remember: it's your book and really only you should decide the best ending for it. It's your privilege and your power. Use it wisely!

 THE END

WHAT DO YOUR READERS READ?

I've talked before [and elsewhere] about how, as writers, we need to know our readers. All readers are different, thank goodness, and we can't write for all of them, but we need to have a sense of who our intended readers are. More than a sense, in my humble etc: we need to know the way their hearts beat, how to shiver their emotions and wrench each kink in their colons.

It strikes me that one of the most useful and practical ways to do this, given that we cannot actually examine the thankfully well-hidden parts of their anatomy, is to know what other books our intended readers enjoy. In other words, what sort of a reader is your reader?

It's another way of asking yourself what sort of a book yours is. What is it like? What do you want it to be like? What are your aims for it? Of course, you want your book to be different, not just the same as something else, but it will have to be sufficiently like some other books for it to attract some readers. Humans like patterns; we need to know what sort of thing to expect, to be able to identify meanings and intentions. Yes, we love to be surprised, too, and sometimes shocked. But we don't like to be deceived or confused or messed around with. As readers, we may want to be challenged but we want to feel we went on a journey with the author and weren't just sent tumbling off a cliff in the dark.

When you have decided what your readers read, this does not mean you then spoon-feed them more of exactly the same. It does not mean you sell-out and give them exactly what they ask for: it simply means that you know how to engage and hook them, how to keep them with you, how not to let the buggers go till the very last page and way beyond. It means you'll stay with them, haunting their thoughts for long after they've finished your book. And it means they'll come back to you for more.

So, my unusually succinct advice for today is: decide what your intended readers also read. And if you don't know, then I rather strongly and even crabbitly suggest that you read my previous post because it seems to me that if you don't know, then you are not reading in genre. And if that's the case then I rather think you should go to the back of the class and stand in the corner with a large conical thing on your head.

When you know what your intended readers also read, you know them as readers, which is all you really need to know. Because then you can do very satisfying things with their innards.

BOOKS SAVE LIVES

'Tis the season for some of us to be thinking about Christmas. 'Tis also the season in which a few years ago I had a bit of an issue with Oxfam. Now, I know that Oxfam does a great job. Obviously. Thing is, they made a Big Mistake and so now I choose to support other charities that help in just the same way.

So, obviously you want to know a) why and b) what the hell it's got to do with books and writing.

Well, what happened was that I bought a goat. As you do. One of those goats that helps (I hope) familes who have horribly little in places in the world that even my writerly imagination finds it hard to handle. So far so good.

Then Oxfam wrote to thank me. Which I wish they hadn't done because a) I didn't need thanks and would rather they'd spent their [my] money on helping people and b) that's when they made their Big Mistake.

OK, I forget the exact words of the beginning of their letter. But it was something like, "Congratulations for not choosing a boring present such as..." - wait for it  -  arghhh -  "a book token." NO! How is a book token boring? A book token allows the recipient to enter any world of his choice, to have his mind opened, heart inspired, soul thrilled, world changed. And I thought that Oxfam, which is supposed to see education as a key to surviving and thriving in this unfair world, viewed books as the key to that key. Books, although hugely pleasurable, and even mainly pleasurable, are much more than that.

For Oxfam to think that the possibility of choosing a book was boring was absolutely enough to stop me giving them a penny ever again. Sorry. Someone else can have my penny and I hope it ends up in the same place, doing the same job, but not through the hands of someone who thinks that books are boring. I realise I am over-reacting and of course I absolutely hope that Oxfam continues to thrive in its excellent work, but I have to make choices about whom to support and it is on such things that my choices hang.


Now, this brings me to my original point: 'tis the season for some of us to be thinking about Christmas. And my Christmas wish is that we should all buy books for as many people as possible. For everyone from babies to retired people, books offer lifelines and life changes. They are humanity personified. They can save the world. I have been lecturing about this to librarians, after reading some fascinating neuro-stuff about what fiction does to the brain, the persona, the person. I could explain [at length] about this, but you'll be glad to know that I won't. If you're interested, go to the On Fiction blog, written by neurosciency people who love fiction, and click on Academic Journals in the links on the right. Most especially, find this amazing and mind-widening article  -  but brace yourself for a serious title: "Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds." It will make you want to prescribe fiction to everyone. Or inject it forcibly into their veins. Seriously. Read it. If you click on the Academic Journals link, you'll find the downloadable pdf file. (Don't forget to come back).

But, forget my lectures. [HOORAY!] What I'd like is for you to start inspiring each other with books to buy for friends and loved ones at Christmas or any other time of the year, by putting your recommendations in the comments beneath this post.

The only rule is that you can't recommend something that someone else has already recommended. Just give us title, author, who would like it and briefly why. Recommend up to five. Doesn't matter if they were published this year or not.

Me first, me, me, me first!

• For women  -  The Device, The Devil and Me by Stephanie Taylor  -  and please buy it from The Linen Press website  -  an emotional rollercoaster, a raw and honest look at mothers, daughters, loss and love. And, I should warn you, cancer. I was so gripped that I read it in two sittings.
  

• For men or women who love lit fic but also quite like it when it's short and has a bit of interesting history attached to it  -  The Falconer by Alice Thomas. Again, if you could buy it from the independent publisher's website, Two Ravens Press, that would be fab. AND they offer discounts. Hooray  -  independent, fabby AND discounty. I am reading it at the moment and it's goooood. Strange, ethereal, but good.
  

• For young people over 11  -  The Witching Hour by Elizabeth Laird - a poignant look at life during the gruesome religious hatred of the Killing Times.

• For the youngest members of the human race  -  anything by Catherine Rayner, such as Sylvia and Bird or Harris Finds His Feet or Augustus and His Smile. Wondrous stuff  -  and she's a lovely person too, which counts for a lot. She would never say a book token was boring.

• For anyone who loves short stories of the absolute classiest order  -  a choice (you could buy both...): The White Road by Tania Hershman or (and???) Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie. (Buy both from Salt Publishing).

Over to you: get recommending please. Books change lives. This Christmas, if you love someone, buy them a book. Or a book token. Boring? Pah!

WRITE FOR READERS

I have always believed that we should write for readers, if we want to be published. Actually, no, I haven't always believed that: I used to believe I should write for myself. But then I realised that it was this selfishness, this solipsism, this narcissism, that was stopping me becoming published for all those horrible years. Now, I have absolutely no problem marrying the twin aims of writing what I want while thinking always of the readers.

So, it's nice to see someone else agreeing.

This is not about selling out; it's not about diminishing our art for the cause of commercialism. I still write a literary brand of teenage fiction (for teenagers who will probably grow up loving adult literary fiction), make no compromises that I'm at all disappointed about and am still writing from the heart. But I have my eyes and ears open to my readers' reactions while I'm writing. It's just like talking to someone: if you rabbit on or wax lyrical and lose your listener, that's not communication - that's lecturing.

So, think of your reader (whoever you want your reader to be) and you may well find yourself being published. Remember: agents and publishers are readers too.

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD

Certain readers have dared to say that I've lost my crabbit touch. (Catherine, are you quaking?) Feedback is all very well, but that's plain insulting.

Well, see if you say the same after this one. (Not to mention the fact that I am very very close to spilling the beans on some SHOCKING covering letters I've just seen. But that's for another time. You don't believe the direness of the slush pile? Hang around.)

Back to the point. Thing about being crabbit is I need people to be crabbit AT. Deluded idiots, for example. Unpublished authors who display inexcusable ignorance. People who write to publishers or agents while they (the writers, not publishers/agents) are on hallucinogenic drugs or in the throes of untreated mania or have just been dumped by their psychotherapists. But none of these people seem to read my blog.

Where have all the deluded idiots gone? Surely I haven't scared them off? That was my original intention but I never intended it to be so easy. There were NONE in my audiences at the Edinburgh Bk Fest either. This is plain weird. There are always deluded idiots and fruitcakes in my audiences. Well, not any more, apparently. In fact, I put a status thingy up on Facebook, saying "I did a workshop today and there were no nutters." No one believed me. The fact that the conversation degenerated into a discussion as to whether I have ever worn lurex flares kind of suggests that all the nutters have followed me to FB, but there we go.

So, since there are no nutters, deluded idiots or inexcusably ignorant readers left on this blog, I must ask you to go out and find them. Seek them here and seek them there. You must know some. They may lurk in your writing groups or something. And when you find them, please tell them this:

On the subject of whether you deserve to have your voice heard, NO, you freaking well don't.

Or, more precisely, you may use your flimsy, boring, inexpert voice if you wish but the rest of the world is entitled to refuse to hear it. In other words:

No, not everyone deserves to be published.

Let me elucidate.

Things that really bug me - No 1:
"But I didn't have the chance of a good education / I have dyslexia / no one taught me grammar / I'm from a family that doesn't read / blahdy blah ... so it's not fair that I'm not allowed to be a published writer like you people with your university degrees / middle-class education / natural talent. You're just lucky."

Things that really bug me - No 2:
"Everyone has the potential to be a writer if they're just given the opportunity. The publishing industry conspires to keep such potential hidden."

Lest I be accused of seeming "elitist" (that frequently mis-used word), I'm not being elitist, but life is. We're all born and/or grow up with different advantages and disadvantages; we're all dealt different cards, and some hands are easier to play than others. But this (ie whether all people who put pen to paper have a right to be "heard") is about who deserves publication; this is about merit. This is about readers. And the real world. Yep, we're lucky if we have the talent, and so in that sense success is elitist because it's not just down to hard work - but elitist is too often used to say something about class, about conspiracy, about unfair oppression by one group of people of another. And this is not what's happening.

All writers, all readers, celebrate good writing in all its forms, wherever it comes from. What do we mean by good writing? Overall, taking all readers into the equation, we mean "writing that we like to read enough to invest time and/or money into reading it."

Frankly, if you can't write well enough, you don't have the right to publication. The act of publication is not a free psychotherapy session. You have the right to write, but not the right to be read because you do not have the right to require anyone to read your words or listen to your voice. This may seem self-evident to many of you, but you would not believe how often I've seen comments on blogs (and occasionally, in the early days, on this one) about how it's not fair that people who didn't have the advantage of a good education and "therefore" [sic] can't use grammar can't become published. (And, btw, if you self-publish your crappy writing, it won't be read. It's got to be damned good to sell, as many hard-working and good self-publishers know.)

Being able to use grammar is being able to use language. If you can't use it, you will be used by it. You will not be able to express yourself clearly or beautifully; you will not be able to say what you mean. This is not about whether you write in a modern style which sometimes breaks rules - oh, I'm all for breaking grammatical rules and I regularly do it, as you may have noticed. "Sentences" without finite verbs, for example. This is about being in control of your tools. And your tools are words and how they work together. You have no other tools worth using.

I couldn't give a flying frig what your educational background was. The writing world is more democratic than many people trying to get into it think: it doesn't actually care whether you learnt latin and ancient Greek (though that helps many, including me), or whether you went to private school or state; it doesn't care about you being dyslexic - I know several successful writers who are; it doesn't care whether you were brought up in a booky family - I know successful writers who weren't. The writing world cares only if you can write, connect, inspire, and if you have something to say. The writing world cares only if you might have enough readers to be worth the shelf-space.

Being able to write well comes from many things: innate talent, hard work, thinking the right thoughts, dreaming the right dreams, reading, reading, reading, loving books, immersion in words, practice. And then all those things over and over and over. And desperation, passion, need. You can't buy it.

"But I want to write; I'd love to see my book in a bookshop; and I've worked really really hard; I've been to writing classes and all that. And I love writing."

Yeah, well, if you're not good enough, or you don't write what someone wants to read, you'll have to carry on loving writing, for yourself. Personally, I love singing; I'd love to sing in the Albert Hall; and I sing a lot, in the shower; I've practised Faure's Requiem and sometimes it sounds quite good; if I'd had singing lessons at school I could have been a singer but I wasn't lucky enough to have them. It's not fair that I can't have my voice heard.

Thing is, it wouldn't be fair for the rest of the world to have to listen to me. I'm not good enough. Yeah, it's bad luck that I don't have a good enough voice to be a singer (that and the fact that professional singers have usually spent years practising - like professional writers). It's also bad luck that I'll never run in the Olympics - though wouldn't that be lovely? I was a fast runner at school - hey, if I'd had the advantage of good training, and keen coaches, and a club, and if my parents had pushed me and if I'd been BETTER, I could have been an Olympic runner too. Life's so unfair, isn't it?

If life was fair, I'd be famous, beautiful, two inches taller, an inch or so thinner. My legs would be straighter. My hair wouldn't require to be blown dry every morning, which takes a lot of time which I could be using to practise my singing. Or my drawing - because I'd love to be an artist. Just wasn't allowed to do art at school because I did latin and Greek. I was so unlucky that way.

If life was fair, I'd have great hand-eye-foot-anything co-ordination - then I could be a professional dancer. And I wouldn't be crap at tennis. It's not fair that those Williams sisters have all that talent and I have none. I'd have a good memory too, if life was fair. Oh, and if I'd been lucky enough to have a good maths teacher, I'd be brilliant at maths and then I could have had a job in a merchant bank and I'd have a lovely salary now. I'd live in a bigger house and have staff and a swimming-pool and sparkly wine every day.

Life's a bitch, eh? And I'm a crabbit old bat instead of a cuddly teddy bear. But bitch or not, you still don't have the right to be published or have your "voice" heard. None of us does. We've got to be good enough, see?

If that's not crabbit enough for you, you perhaps need to know that I decided to resign as a tester for the Brownies' Writer's Badge, because I insisted on failing someone and the head Brownie people (owls or vultures or something) didn't like it ... Yay for standards!

(Added on Nov 30th - PS after a lengthy and excellent comment thread, I have now got to stop comments after a sudden series of spam  -  no idea what it was about as it was in Chinese, which I do not read!)

OF BOOKS, MAGIC and YURTS

I only have a few minutes to bring you a post today, as I'm about to go to lunch with my agent to celebrate the start of September (I know: I don't need much excuse for lunch); the end of the Edinburgh Book Festival; a glorious sunny day; and the fact that I have a new novel brewing and the shocking first chapter is tantalisingly poised to be written but I am holding myself back.

So, just having a few minutes, I'm being lazy and bringing you a post that went out today for a collaborative blog I'm involved with - the Awfully Big Blog Adventure. Or ABBA, as we misleadingly call it. And no, Gillian, for the record, I have never worn lurex flares and I am still considering proceedings for defamation.

Anyway, here it is, my wistful report on the book festival and, most especially, the Glory that is the Yurt.

But, as a little extra just for you, I bring you the real heroes of my last few weeks:

And now, allow me to remind you (if you haven't already) to change my blog address in your list of links and to rejoin as a follower if you'd like to. It commits you to nothing. In fact, I haven't a clue what it means, but I do like to see you there. It makes me feel I'm not whistling in the wind.

SAVE OUR SCHOOL LIBRARIES

I am not here. To all intents and purposes - stupid phrase - I do not exist. I am having a rare weekend off. And when I say "off", boy, do I mean "off"? Indeed I do.

Let me tell you what I am doing. (And there will be a serious point to this post, as ever.) When I say "am", this is confusing, because actually I "am" writing this post in advance of doing the thing that I "am" doing. But, having an imagination, I can tell you what I will be doing when this post automatically wings its way to you. What I am doing is ... prepare yourself ... relaxing.

See, Jane Smith thinks I'm working really really hard promoting Deathwatch, and she is in awe of my energy. Little does she know that this weekend, from Friday afternoon till Sunday afternoon, I am going to be alternately in states of bliss and euphoria and my only exertion will involve trying to work out if there is any difference. (I will report back.) Two friends are coming to stay, both female, which is important, because otherwise this wouldn't work - hang on: what did you think I meant?? - and we are indulging in a weekend of pure, well, indulgence. This involves, in almost equal measure, chocolate, sparkly wine, laughter, friendship, reminiscences, sparkly wine, chocolate and ... spa treatments. Oh yes! I am having a rejuvenating facial (increasingly necessary, according to a man close to me - too close for comfort if he says that again) and a "sports" massage (the closest I plan to come to "sports" this side of death).

While I am doing this - in preparation, I may say, for a horrendous week of all the things Jane thinks I'm doing - you are going to be doing a very, very simple task. You are going to go on-line and sign an incredibly important petition. I think you have to live in the UK to do this, but if you don't, please cheer us from the side-lines.

The petition is simple. It calls for school libraries to be statutory.

Now, OK, so I am children's author and perhaps therefore care more than some about school libraries. But every author should care equally. Because school libraries create the readers of the future. The readers of your books. Without readers we can no more than whisper in a storm.

Every children's author knows the wonderful work that school librarians do. They inspire reading; they have myriad ways to entice even the reluctant or afraid into the magical world of books. They can, quite frankly, save people. We, keen readers, take reading for granted. We assume that reading is an optional hobby, just because you don't die if you don't do it. But we forget that you don't live if you don't do it. Or not properly, not fully.

Only someone who takes for granted the pleasure and power of reading, or someone of extreme callousness, could not want to support something which offers that power and opens that world to all. Without the reader paying anything.

In a couple of weeks' time, I'm doing a key-note speech at a librarians' conference and I plan to show them what goes on in the human brain when we read fiction, why it is necessary for our soul and our humanity, our health, our decision-making, our morality. I'll be preaching to the converted, but I want them to understand and value the immense importance of what they do. I want them to go away knowing that they are doing one of the most relevant jobs possible and one that is needed more than ever in our fast-paced digital world, where we are bombarded with data too quickly to process it properly, too quickly to generate wisdom.

Please, please sign this petition. Your future readers depend on it. You depend on it.

Meanwhile, I've signed it, so I am allowed to have rejuvenating collagen facials and relaxing sports massages. But I will not be so relaxed that I won't be absolutely furious if lots of you haven't signed it.

Listen, someone told me I was scary the other day. Hooray for scary. I can be even scarier if called upon.

Just sign, OK?

I'm even going to harangue the masseuse into signing.

DANGEROUS READING

I now bring you a heartening school story.

Message from an English teacher to me today: "Some of my pupils were reading Deathwatch under the desks last lesson as they needed to find out what was happening next - very gripped! (No I didn't tell them off!)"

Hooray for teachers who so much like the fact that their pupils read that they turn a blind eye when they read in the wrong place!

But it leads me to ask you: what books did you risk punishment to read when you were young? What stories helped turn you into the readers and writers you now are? What exactly was it about those books that tranpsorted you to a place where detentions were worth courting?

One of my favourite reads, which I read over and over again and would certainly have gone to many detentions for, was The Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas. Oh, the romance, the swords, the horrible torture, the blood-curdling pain, the honour and bravery and all that bejewelled swash-buckling!

So go on, share your favourite books from your youth, if you can remember that far - and maybe jog our memories so that all those illicit moments of dangerous reading come flooding deliciously back.

Whatever it is that you identify as the must-read factor, I bet you that if we all put a bit more of it into our own writing, we'd end up writing stories that more people would want to read. And publish.

Because it is my firm belief that it's not just kids who want to be gripped by a book, gripped so that the real world fades away for a while.

PIGEON COMPETITION RESULTS

Well, well, my husband surprised me. He went for the literary novelist. Hmm, note to self: the pen is mightier than the sword.

Here's Harry's verdict on your pigeon post pieces. (By the way, he is a man of few words so don't expect any gushing):

"I congratulate the bloggers and their creativity. Every entry brought a smile or a shiver. All should win prizes. (Steady on there. You're not that nice to me.)

I especially commend:
For wacky, original, left fieldness - bshanks (the Geisha girl)
For cool language - Jan
For wit - Rebecca (the troll) (don't make personal remarks about my blog-readers, please)
For nice try but too many words - Ebony (yeah, Ebony, read the submission guidelines, why dontcha? He liked that one a lot but he's a rule-follower so you had to go)
For management training advice - Phoenix (heh? He doesn't normally like management training advice.)

But, the winner for me - and this is because I find the evocation of war zones heartbreaking and scary - is Sally Zigmond - "when her window shattered she knew he had lied."

Well done everyone. A humble capitalist salutes your skill - all of you.
Best wishes, Harry Morgan"

Aww. Thank you, Harry. (Edited to include the words, for Sally's benefit: A very good choice - you are, after all, a man of taste.)

I should add (because it's my blog and I can interfere if I want to) that, because he hasn't been following this blog properly, he missed the cleverness of Sandra and Sarah, who both did pigeon-related spoof query letters (and one in rhyme and mentioning Werther's toffees, no less). I also loved Emma's disappearing garden idea, and Elen's detective-themed one. Really, there were loads of others he or I could have mentioned but life's a bitch. We laughed, a lot, and then we laughed again. And then we realised that a decision had to be made so I went and had another glass of wine and he made his decision. Which is as it should be.

I thought the whole thing was fascinating. So many different writers, so many different personalities, so many different takes on the same subject. Every genre was there, and every mood, from urban to surreal, from literary to chick-lit, from dark to light and from sensual to prosaic. There were the ones who'd done their research, the ones who'd used local knowledge and political topicality (comparing us to our fairly near neighbour, Fred G, are you??) and the ones who led others in new directions.

It was the world of books in microcosm.

Then too, there's the reader. Oh, the reader. The unpredictability of another person's response; the need for a writer to understand that not everyone will "get" what you were trying to do; the knowledge that your reader will judge you while not knowing what was in your mind, or without appreciating your talent or wit. Every reader comes from somewhere different, brings different desires and meanings and pleasures to the words he/she reads. And likes it differently. You don't know the reader but the reader will judge you as though you were writing especially for him.

So, when you write, and then you send it out, you take a leap into the unknown. You can't know how it will be received.

Which is so the scary bit. Trouble is, readers just don't know how hard it is. Damn them.

And then, of course, there's trying to sell books, which I've just realised I have spectacularly failed to do: my husband just picked as the winner the one person who'd already said she was going to buy Deathwatch anyway. So, that's one lost sale and we don't get to eat today. Thanks, mate. Back to my garret.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone, congratulations to all the named writers and especially to Sally.

WHO KNOWS BETTER? READER OR WRITER?

Interesting piece on BookBrunch here. The woman who button-holed Trevor Dolby is making the same mistake as some unpublished authors - believing that there's some kind of conspiracy amongst agents and publishers not to publish good writing. (Er, hello, can someone please suggest a single sane reason why such a conspiracy might exist????) It's another deluded idiot symptom and will get her nowhere. (Understandable though her frustration is, and I really mean that.)

Such people also seem to think that no agents or publishers would know a good piece of writing if it came up and spat at them. No, sorry, it's we the authors who are the last people to be able to be objective about our own work - though we need to try - and the sooner we accept that the opinion of our desired readers, including the professional and multi-experienced ones, matter more than our own, the sooner we will become published and enjoyed by the reading public.

And here's the thing: all the agents and publishers who rejected me during my now well-documented and shameful 21 years of failing, were RIGHT. And I am even grateful to them. (Though at the time, I'd probably have stuck pins in a few publishers' wax models if I'd been any good at fashioning passable likenesses in wax.) See, I believed I was good enough a writer - which we have to believe, in order to keep going, don't we? And yet at the same time, we also need to recognise that there's something about what we're doing that isn't yet good enough. That's the dilemma, the razor-edge we have to walk along. And all that is why I'm deeply grateful (and not even through gritted teeth) to all of them for not publishing my substandard stuff.

I don't know about you, but much as I desperately need to be published, I more need to be read and enjoyed. We don't write in a vacuum, or even in a nurturing bubble occupied only by our family, undiscerning friends and pets: we write to be read and heard. Don't we? Therefore, we simply have to listen carefully to those who might read and hear us and those who might have a fighting chance of taking our words to the wider audience.

And if no one wants to listen to our words, then we should either shut up or write better.

Woah, crabbit or WHAT today??