The Honesty of Bodies

My WIP has been a troublesome, tricksy beast. Originally going by the title A Life Drawn Freehand, it started as a tale of a grieving 50-something mother comng to terms with her grief by pursuing the career she put on hold in her 20s. I have struggled and struggled with the voice but I finaly think I have it, in the context of a very different story, but one with the same heart, the relationship of mutual discovery between an older woman and younger man.



This is the new chapter one. The book is now called The Honesty of Bodies, from a line in the beautiful poem of Kirsty Logan's, Ways of Making Love.



It should probably come with a content warning - but you probably all know that by now :)

--


“It’s not like I’m not hungry,” she says. “I just can’t eat. It’s like eating is a memory my body knows it has but can’t ever reach.”

A distant memory, I think, looking at her. She has so little energy her head’s just lolling back in the pillow and she can’t even look at me. Not that it matters, I guess. I shift in front of the sun coming in the window and her eyes are unresponsive. She’s shutting down.

“And I don’t even know if I want to remember. You know?”

“Yeah.”

“No you don’t.”

“I guess not.”

“I keep trying to figure it out.” Her speech is slow now, and she’s not looking at me and she’s not looking at the ceiling and she’s not looking anywhere else, so I find it hard to place the words at all. “This thing. This whatever it is that made me forget how to eat. Where did it come from?”

“Who knows,” I say, but the question’s not for me.

“I just don’t know. Am I killing myself? Or is someone, some thing doing this to me? Or did I just get sick?”

Her breathing’s as loud as her words by now. I look at her chest to see the rise and fall but there’s nothing there.

Eventually she says, “Kiss me.”

I bend over and press my lips to hers, leave them there a second, and pull away, half expecting the room to be silent when I do.

“That was nice,” she says. “I always thought it would be.” She runs the tip of her tongue around her mouth and I think I see a movement in her throat.

“You thought about us kissing?”

But she’s already somewhere else.

Lifting her into the chair is so easy, even though I haven’t worked out in months. I fix the drip like I was shown, and wheel her down the ward.

“Just getting some air,” I say to a nurse, who smiles back at us.

I put her in the front of the car, leaving the drip and the chair, pop a couple of warfarin, and take her back to mine. She’s still alive when I place her in the bath, because it’s been an hour now and she feels as warm as the water I’ve run for her. I wash the smell of hospital from her skin, dry her down, and smooth oil on her and in her, leaving it slick on the surface of her sores.

The silk falls over her and she’s so slippery I make sure I have a good hold of her as I carry her downstairs, and back into the car.

We’re driving for half an hour and I haven’t heard anything from her since she left her bed. I don’t carry her far from the car. The trees are tight and the summer growth is thick.

The silk slides off her as easily as it slid on, and in the sun, Bella’s skin, her whole body, is almost transparent. And cool, even in the heat; my hands warm the oil and its scent merges with that of the leaves. The light tricks me and for a moment I think she’s becoming solid, like she’s drawing the sap into her.

I remove my clothes slowly, and lie on top of her, and even when I come the only sound is the grass underneath us.

I lie beside her, reach out, feel the cloth, and take out the blade. I slide it through the skin on each of her arms, leaving lines of red that seem to rise and then hover, the fluid as still as the summer day.

I draw the same lines on my own arms and watch as the warfarin pushes my blood.

I take Bella’s hand and lay my head on the forest floor, and I wonder if the scent of blood will draw foxes or badgers before the insects come, or maybe someone will follow their dog through the undergrowth, or maybe a gamekeeper tracking his gundog after a kill, or maybe Julie.

Maybe Julie.

An inspiring author across media

On #litchat a week or so ago, I came across Cendrine Marrouat, an inspirational self-published author who works in performance, photography, and video as well as literature. It was exactly the kind of approach that excites me about writers, and Cendrine was kind enough to let me ask her some questions.

1. I get an immense sense of calm from your website. Can you tell me about the central message you try to convey through your work?
First of all, thank you very much for interviewing me. I am honored. And thank you for the compliment.
Through my work – poetry, freelance writing, photography and spoken word – I try to convey an uplifting message of peace by focusing on topics about which a lot of people are reluctant to talk. One of them is death. I even wrote a book on it.
Life is beautiful. We can only be happy if we embrace our fears.

2. I'd love to know why you took the decision to self-publish.
I have always been of an independent mind. I like to do things myself and I rarely rely on third-party help. I am a perfectionist and can spend hours polishing up small details. When you are cognizant of Photoshop, you can create great covers yourself. And Lulu provides excellent quality. I have heard a lot of people complain about them, but in my case, I only have nothing but great things to say.
However, self-publishing is not for everybody. A lot of authors do not realize that writing and publishing a book are the easiest things in the world. Marketing and promotion are the killers.
So for writers like me, who have a lot of patience, do not mind spending hours doing research and working a lot, and love to learn new things, it is an excellent choice. Self-publishing really works in the long-run.

3. You work in many different media. Do you find this helps your work, and if so how, or do you find that the different strands detract from one another?
As the Winnipeg Art Examiner and Winnipeg Spirituality Examiner, I have to write like a journalist and follow the Associated Press guidelines. With WAGTi Media Group and WAGTi Radio, it is a mixture between blogging and journalism. I also have had my blog for a couple of years. I wrote two plays and a few short stories, and dabbled in novels. Of course, I write poetry. I am an aspiring photographer with a focus on natural settings; and I do spoken word.
So, these different media help me define my unique style and force me to question my purpose as an artist. As a matter of fact, they complement one another.

4. There is such a distinctive feel to your site, I'd love to know what someone could expect who went to one of your live events.
Why, thank you!
Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to perform yet. And that is why I recorded a spoken word album. Here, in Winnipeg, Canada, nothing much happens on the poetry scene. There are a few spoken word events but they are not promoted well. Often, you hear of them after they happened. However, I would love to perform someday soon!

5. Do you think it's important for writers to perform their work? Do you feel it adds something that isn't there on the page?
I think that a real artist will always try to give his or her audience/readers a unique experience. So, ideally, I would say yes. It helps get the message across better and allows an artist to promote themselves in a more effective manner, I think.

6. Would you like to say a bit about what you have just finished working on?
My new collection Five Years and Counting. A Journey into the Mind of Soul Poetry will officially be released around August 2010. This book is unique. I regrouped more than 150 poems and put them in a specific order. I see poetry as a reflection of the human mind and as such, I wanted to highlight the most important stages in a person's life: birth and childhood, teenage years, adulthood and finally, elevation. This last stage is really about how understanding the meaning of life and death can help anybody let go of their fears and start to enjoy life to the fullest.
Right now the book is only available to members of the Five Years and Counting fan page on Facebook. Anybody can join and take advantage of the offer: http://www.facebook.com/fiveyearsandcounting.

7. And what will be coming next?
I have a second spoken word album in the works. For the first CD, I worked on my own, and recorded everything but the music at home. The music was provided by three amazing composers. This time, I have asked some incredibly talented spoken word artists, musicians and singers to collaborate in part on the project. I gave them free reign to interpret my poems; and the results so far have been amazing. This album should be released around the end of 2010.
I have also started working on a series of monthly Vlogs to help writers, especially beginners. I remember when I started five years ago, I could not really find anybody to give me advice; and the Internet was kind of confusing. Now, after many trials and errors, and a lot of work and research, I am quite knowledgeable on the topic. My first Vlog was on "good content": what is it and how do you provide it? People can view it on my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/soulpoetrysite).
I am also looking for artists (writers, authors, musicians, etc.) in Manitoba, Canada, who are interested in being featured for my Winnipeg Art Examiner column. Feel free to contact me at info@cendrinemarrouat.com.
For more information on what I do, visit my official website: http://www.cendrinemarrouat.com/. For every purchase in the Books & CD section, I donate a dollar to a selected charity.

Head

head

bloodrush. milk. black.

head

diabetic priest. confessional chocolate. cunt cheese.

head

take it. whimper. gimp mask. lips.

head

bang. pottery. stairs. daddy. bang.

head.

choke. throttle. motor.

head

head

head

guitar. meth. monkey-wrench. chord.

head

wet. grey. in. pink. switchblade.

head

thrash thrash thrash thrash

thrash thrash thrash

head

there are these moments when everything is transparent and I'm seeing through me and you to the edge

head

ludicrous random

head

scab. linen. clot.

head

thrash

head

thrash

head

tulips. galileo. toner. glass.

head

glitter. snot. deelyboppers. halo.

head

thigh. neck. eyes. horizon.

head

through me and you to the edge

100 Stories for Haiti

This is just to tell you a little bit about a wonderful project put together by Greg McQueen, a long-time online writing friend. I'm sure many of you will already know about 100 Stories for Haiti, but for those who don't, please check it out.

Greg received 400 submissions for the book, from which 100 were selected, by some wonderful writers, all of them with an uplifting feel. It's a wonderful project, a great example of what can be achieved when people come together and decide to do something.

Please go and buy this book. It's a wonderful cause, and an amazing collection of stories, including many from people you'll know like John Booth and Kirsty Logan.

Dear Publisher

Thank you for sending me your contract for consideration. I am sure you will appreciate that talented authors receive many unsolicited contracts. Nonetheless, I am aware that a publisher like yourself relies upon discovering new talent in order to keep its lists fresh and win new readers, so I hope that you will not be too disappointed that in this case I am declining your kind offer. I wish you all the best in seeking exciting new talent elsewhere.

I understand that it is frustrating to receive a form rejection from an author, without any elaboration on specific areas to work on in your contract. I hope that the following general points may help you in your future submissions.

1. An author relies for their living upon a day job. They write, edit, and network in the evenings, at weekends, and in lunch hours and teabreaks. A publisher's advance, the largest incentive for an author to sign a contract, is not sufficient for them to give up their day job with any security.

2. Many talented, exciting authors write work that will not appeal to large readerships. Publishers need to sell large amounts of books. The result of this tension is that many of these authors will fail to recoup publishers' outlay within their first two books, and it will not be viable for publishers to keep them on board.

3. Without a publisher, a writer is under no such pressure, and will not be junked if their initial books "fail".

4. Should a writer achieve initial success wit ha publisher, they will be expected to produce similar works, and not explore or develop their talent.

5. Without a publisher there is no pressure to change for a writer the way they write in order to fit market needs.

6. Without a publisher there is the freedom to experiment, change genre at will, try, fail, try again, fail again, and devlop one's talent, voice, and potential to the full.

7. With a publisher a writer must concede control over cover design, the way their work is presented to the world.

8. The long cycle of the publishing industry means that the time from pen to audience inevitably freezes some of the initial energy and excitement of the creative process, leading to a less real and invigorating feedback process between writer and audience, and a less meaningful feedback loop.

9. With a publisher, a new writer loses editorial control. Not just total control of final cut, but control of which editor to use in the first place. An editor must have two qualities - the ability to be utterly ruthless; and absolute sympathy with an author's aims. An author needs to be free to select their own, trusted, editor.

10. Pricing - whilst unsigned, the author is free to set the price for all their books - and other merchandise. This includes setting the price at free should the author wish to do that with, for example, their ebooks. It also means the freedom to create and price specila and limited editions of their work.

In conclusion, I am afraid that an author must consider not just their short-term but their long-term future. And whilst I am sure that your kind offer, were I to accept it, would put me in a financially more advantageous position one year from now, and possibly three years from now, compared to that if I reject it; I am afraid that the models I have run show that in five, ten, and twenty years - that is, over the course of my career - there is no financial advantage, and in many models financial disadvantage, in my accepting.

I wish you every success in your future publishing career.

Muse, don't look at me like that!

Beatrice, Edie Sedgewick, the Dark Lady. Nine of them who flounced around Mount Helicon. Not to mention a great guitar band. Artists and writers frequently talk about their muses. The person - or, indeed, object, or place (Woody Allen's New York, for example) - who not only stirs something creative insode them, but makes that creativity come gushing out in golden form - transforms it as it touches the page into greatness.

But is there a darker side to the muse? In one sense, there very obvioulsy is, and it goes back to Platonism and the worship and objectifictaion of the spiritual. The muse is placed on a pedestal, worshipped, and, as a result, denied genuine reality - museishness is to blame for a lot of our less beneficial conceptions of women, for example.

But I mean another dark side - for the artist or writer or musician.

For me, the idea of a muse is rather terrifying. I imagine my muse, if I had one, staring at me - taunting or sneering - "You dare to call THAT worthy of me?" she harumphs, turning her back and leaving me staring at a blank page.

The point I want to make is this. there is a very fine line between inspiration and intimidation. Between the object of beauty who touches you and opens a creative spring and an ethereal form that's just "out of your league" - that you could never do justice, so you end up snivelling in self-pity, and struck down by block, like an opera composer waiting a lifetime till they're ready to produce a piece for the voice of their generation.

When you're a teenager you're desperate for a muse. A boy or girl in the class above, possibly a friend of your brother or sister - someone to bring out the Byronic in you. And when you find them, you aften will write a great torrent of, er, romantic twaddle, in your efforst to impress. Later you will look back ashamedly, and every time you write FOR someone or thing you will possibly be struck with fear of doing a similar hatchet job. Add in a mix of idealisation and you have a recipe for paralysis - we can, after all, never give a sacrifice worthy of the gods.

For me it's not people who act as intimidating muses - it's notebooks. I imagine if I have a beautiful hand-boundleather journal I will write something worthy of it. But I can never find a sentence good enough and so I sit and stare, and anything any good I DO write by hand is always in a skanky notebook I bought in bulk from a Polish supermarket.

Yet we feel instinctively that art is about eros, about love, about, in short, muses. So how do we avoid paralysis and create something decent as the result of having a muse?

The answer's simple: forget about doing justice TO your subject; forget about writing something FOR someone. Instead, this is a time when a writer/artist needs to be introspective. What is it your subject/muse inspires in YOU? Look within, and describe the fire, the turmoil and the raging passion you find there. Considerations of worthiness go out of the window - the muse will enter only as a marginal character, a penumbra for the piece, but unmistakably present in the form of those qualities that inspire those particular thoughts. This way you will ACTUALLY do justice to them - not as idealised object but as active subject stirring your passions. And you will connect with your audience, will enable them not just to admire but to feel as you feel.

Sixteen Songs that Make Me Cry

OK, so it IS a list but it's not exactly a list. And I'm not just talking songs that bring a little tear - I am, after all, one of the world's great blubberbuses, so that'd be a pretty long list. No, these are the gushers!

So why such an unseasonal list? And why sixteen? Well, the latter question is easy, and it has to do neither with Harry Christophers nor John Hughes, but simply the sonorousness of the words (mwah, dahling). Why? Well, I love lists, and this is the list time of year, but most of all beacuse of my next novel. I've always liked the idea of writing a novel that genuinely makes people cry. Songs from the Other Side of the Wall does it to me, the ending has me blubbing like a blubby thing but I get the impression it leaves most people a little confused.

Why do I want to write a novel that makes people cry? Well, for me that's the point of connection we were talking about in the "pain" debate - the moment when a writer's words and my life intersect, when she speaks to me and only me, when she unlocks me with her words, and the tears are what she releases as the door opens. It's an intimate, beautiful, very special moment between reader and writer. I would love to speak in that way - even if only once, to one reader.

So why songs instead of books? Two reasons - first, I came up with the idea whilst listening to music - so it seemed obvious. Second, thinking it over, I actually found it easier to put my finger on what it was about songs that drove me to gushing than I did books - so it's more instructional to me as a writer.

Finally, for info - Life Drawn Freehand will go into production over the next few days, with a summer 2010 release date. It's the story of 50-something art teacher Ella, who realises, when her son dies on a gap year, that she has had her life on hold for 30 years. In order to win an audience for her art, she decides to give everything she does for a whole year away free. EVERYTHING. She gets recognition, but it brings more than she bargained for, in the shape of two intense affairs, with alcoholic ex-model and musician Sabrina, and her 16 year-old pupil Matthew. As the year draws to a close, Matthew takes Ella and Sabrina on a journey to the place where Ella's son died. It's a journey from which all know only one of them will return. It's a love story that examines every single connotation we put on the word "free".

OK, so here's The Sixteen, the songs most likely to flood the room with sentimental saline. As an authorial aide, I've put them into categories, according to why they make me cry. With apologies to Polly Harvey and Janis Joplin - I have no reason why you aren't on this list. Possibly because just the mention of your names can make me gush.

The words
All the songs on this list are, musically, constructed a certain way. I'm not enough of a musician to put my finger on it but it's something to do with rise and fall, a soaring, fragile voice slightlyu at odds with a melody that does a certain somethnig. BUT some songs have words that just pile on that effect.

Black Balloon - The Kills - OK, I'm gonna try really hard to avoid the copyright police. A line like "I've starred in a thousand street scenes just around the corner form you, on the edge of your dreams" - if that were a poem with no muisc it would have me in tears - it's a situation we all know - looking on but not being able to touch. Knowing we will come so close but no closer.

E-Bow the Letter R.E.M. "These corrosives work their magic slowly" and above all else "dreaming of Maria Callas, whoever she is" - it's blankness - teh kind of blank despair that's beyond despair Daisy Anne Gree writes. Oh, and the deep, deep sliding melody, and the howling Patti Smith solo doesn't make it less tearjerking.

Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinnead O'Connor Yes, I know it's kitsch and uncool, but it's my age. And if it needs to be explained why the words make you cry, you're probably a cyborg.


The music
Very hard for me to say what it is about these, although I intend to analyse them at length. The first two are, in my non-musical opinion, the most perfectly-crafted rock songs ever written. I should also note that I limited myself to one song a band. When I drew up an original top 10, 6 were Radiohead. Thom Yorke has a LOT to do with it - his voice, and his stage persona, are in themselves enough to reduce me to tears. If I'd chosen High & Dry or Fake Plastic Trees I may have put the song in the "delivery" category for that reason. lucky could, after a magical set at Reading, belong in the personal association category. Oh, and it's one of my tests of character whether people prefer Jealous Guy or Imagine; up there with the great Notting Hill v Four Weddings/ Unbearable Lightness of Being v Book fo Laughter and Forgetting debates

Lucky - Radiohead

Jealous Guy - John Lennon

Don't Look Back into the Sun - Libertines - I CAN say what it is about this - it's in the guitar sound - the way the tone of the sound somehow makes you feel as though something beautiful has been lost forever


The delivery
These are songs that make me cry largely because of the persona/unique voice of the singer (if I'd picked a different Skunk Anansie song it would have gone here)

End of the Century - Blur - Damon sounds like he's about to cry at any moment throughout - and especially when he says "there's ants on the carpet" - and it works by sympathy. He also sounds like a man who's realising for the first time that everything he loved has turned out to be crap.

She's a Star - James - because the voice seems to hit resonance with something in my brain and they enter this feedback loop of melancholy

Saturday Night - Suede - no one does fragile and broken but with a lilting beauty that keeps its dignity (that's the real thing - the defiance you know is futile - think the guy in Tiannenmen) like Brett Anderson.


The artist
Not a lot I can do with this. There are some songs that, whilst they would always pull the heartstrings, bring out the monsoon because we know what happened next. Because we are actually crying for the artist. With apologies to anyone who ever thought I had any taste. Yes, that IS Karen Carpenter. But, com eon - it's Karen Carpenter! Piaff is part because it's her, part the dignity in teh voice - the defiance (that's something, like the Suede above, I CAN learn from)

Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana Unplugged version

Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Karen Carpenter version

La Vie en Rose - Edith Piaff


Personal association
Interestingly, I think it is nostalgia rather than heartbreak that does it here - a perfect moment never to be recaptured. That would be true of Lucky.

Secretly - Skunk Anansie - has to do with a rather unpleasant ex, and most of it is actually about the song itself - it's about as manipulative as you can get with it's quiet-loud-quiet. Not nearly so good a song as Smells Like Teen Spirit or anything by the Pixies that uses the form better, but definitely the queintessence of heartbreaking. It's all to do with the sudden changes and the fact that you never quite, even in the moments of exhilaration, escape the underlying melancholy.


Other associations
Songs that make you cry because of what went with them - most often with me a film. Something one can learn from by remembering taht we need to engage the whole reader, and not just the bit of the brain that takes in the words on the page - why a live performance will always work better.

California Dreaming - Mamas and Papas -because I saw Chungking Express at an impressionable age

Anthem from Three Colours: Blue - Zbigniew Priesner - because it's the saddest film ever made (the defiance, fragility and everything to do with the tragedy of Kieslowski's early death and the fact it's got Juliette Binoche in doing that kind of "thousand emotions with one movement of the eyebrow" thing), and this tune is an integral part of that.


OK, so now you know my 2010 playlist. What I hope more than anythnig is that in some way, however small, I can make Life Drawn Freehand speak to one of you enough to draw a tear. Just one would do!

Writing Peace

I've known since a very interesting #writechat session a few weeks ago that I needed to write an article about this. This ISN'T that article, which will appear later on the Year Zero site, but I want to start a discussion that will help me have the first clue where to start that piece. but given that it's Armistice Day, it seems nuts not to post something now. Please be argumentative and outspoken.

A fortnight ago, Marc nash wroet a wonderful article, Pain, in which he posed the question whetehr it's possible for writers to write a reader's pain. It has, by dint of accident, the fascinating subject matter, and the quality of Marc's thought, become somewhat programmatic for our recent works, and indeed will provide the introduction to the forthcoming anthology Thirteen Shadows Waiting for Sunrise. There has been some incredible discussion, some breathtaking writing, and some very deep soul-searching. But what I am hoping some of my fellow Zeroes will turn their thought to in the New Year will be seen as far more sinister and disturbing than writing pain. I want to know if it's possible to write peace.

Specifically: can there be a great novel without conflict?

Now, I'm not daft enough to equate conflict in a literary setting with guns & ammo, or even with dragons and jealous fathers and the old hackeneyed staples that have come down form the courtly tradition. Although I DO want to ask about this, as well - the differnce between internal and external conflict, whether one is the subject of literary fiction, the other genre fiction, as is sometimes posited.

We are so used, thanks to that courtly model, and thanks to the almost universally worshipped Dwight V Swain, to the idea that a novel is driven by conflict, that a character is only interesting if they are flawed. It is so much a commonplace that if flaws and conflict are absent a critiquer or editor will simply box-tick, saying "add conflict". Most of the time, of course, this is sound advice. but is it really a no-brtainer box tick?

I want to finish posing the question with some thoughts I and the ever insightful @kashicat put forward:

- the reason peace is seen as uninteresting often has to do with the fact people think of peace as the absence of conflict. In fact peace is a rich, wonderful, and fascinating state with a multitude of contents of its own.

- humans are imperfect. We therefore think of a character without flaws as being impossible to relate to. But is a flaw really the same as imperfection? What about motivation?

So: a novel where all the characters are "good" (discuss!) ; set in a peaceful land with no obstacles to be surmounted. Would anyone care to read it? What on earth would it look like? And how could we possibly set about writing it?

Literature's the new Art: so who's Jay Jopling?

Well, no one's actually said literature is the new art. Apart from me. Most people say it's the new music and they've got a point. Even more people say it's NOT the new music and talk about how literature can't use the gigs & merch model. And they're wrong. About the latter bit, anyway. But what I can't help feeling is that, whilst the music industry is something from which we can learn a lot - about downloads and gigging, and connecting with fans and streamlining businesses; it's actually to the art world we should be looking to understand literature.

I'm always sniping about Goldsmiths and CSM in the 90s and how they were glorified school tie networks, and how the MA Creative Writing from UEA threatened to become the same, but that's not what I mean.

What I mean is this: literature, with a publishing industry on its knees and a load of creative talent chomping to escape the shackles, is shaping up to be the next YBA (Young British artists - Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Michael Landy, Gavin Turk, sam Talyor Wood, The Chapman Brothers, The Wilson Twins et al ad inf).

It's not to do with new tech - not directly, anyway. It's more that I see more and more groups of writers outside the mainstream coming closer and closer to the big time by doing things their way. People like MCM, groups like Jet-Pack and Backword Books, our own beloved Year Zero, salons like Book Club Boutique. Perhaps most groundbreaking in her own way - and you'll laugh at me for saying - Catherine O'Fynn with her mild unassuming "this is just how I did it" approach.

It felt for a little while as though we may have got there a few years ago - as though someone had finally swept Amis and McEwan and Swift out with a broom and replaced them with a hungry new generation of people hungry to put ideas on paper. But A M Homes and Monica Ali and even the Great White Teeth Hope Zadie Smith just got subsumed into the same old same old mainstream. At least Tracey Emin took 20 years to sell out!

So what went wrong with the last generation of new hope? Well, to answer that, take a look at what went right with YBA. If one wants to generalise hideously and lay oneself open to all kinds of loopholes, then one can lay the answer at the feet of two men. And neither was called Saatchi.

What happened for YBA were Jay Jopling and Nick Serota. Curators. Jay Jopling, for those of you of more tender years than me, was the owner of White Cube, the gallery that not only showcased but promoted the work of the fledgeling YBAs. He was the PT Barnum, the - should we rather say - Malcolm MacLaren of YBA - the man who made everytone else think pickled sharks were cool. Nick Serota, of course, was the legendary Tate curator responsible for the Turner Prize.

Curators.

That's what the literary world lacked when White Teeth, Brick Lane, The End of Alice hit the shelves. People who were prepared to take a generation - not just one or two but a wave - and bring them to the public. People who spotted talent, nurtured it, showed it off, and didn't care if there was a place for it in the mainstream - because through force of showmanship and chutzpah they created a parallel and more exciting space.

And that's the big issue the literary sphere faces today if it's going to see all that talent blossom into a golden age, a movement, a new dawn on the public consciousness, a whole fistful of cliches that boil down to one thing: getting the general public talking about books.

Because whether it was marvelling at the brilliance of Whiteread's inside-out house, or spitting disgust at Chris Ofili's dung-filled portraits, Emin's unmade bed, or Hirst's pregnant cow cut in two, the thing Jopling and Serota did was get people talking about art. And not just artworks. A decade or so ago you could walk down a high street in the UK and hear your average Jane and Joe Public discussing what art meant. When was the last time that happened with books? Sure, we talk about vampires or Lost Symbols, but you can't stand at the bus stop and hear people jibe "Ah, but is it literature?"

And that's what we need. We need someone to make the general public talk - with gasps of delight and disgust - about books. About this book and that book and "what is literature?"

So who will it be? You'd think it'd be a publisher, wouldn't you? Vicky Barnsley, maybe, at HC, or Jessica Weiner at Harper Studio, maybe even Scott Pack at Fifth Estate. They're doing good things, all of them. But. Oh but but but.

Maybe the agents then. What about? Well, precisely. Most writers will have heard of Nathan Bransford. Lovely guy. Enthusiastic. And his authors, his individual, exciting, but somehow with a common sense of purpose authors are? Well, precisely (to repeat myself).

So who WILL be the Jay Jopling of the Literary World? Richard Nash, of Soft Skull and Cursor fame, believes it will be him. No, whatever he tells you, he DOES. And he may be right. Maybe.

I'll give a good guess. A good guess is that it'll be one of two people. It'll be a celeb - an Oprah or a Richard & Judy (and you could make a case they've partially done it already, scoff ye not) who says "I'm gonna say f*ck mainstream books. I'm gonna have me a book club and choose me the best most exciting damn books on the planet WHEREVER they come from" and shouts them from the hills. Or it'll be the person who sets up a prize with a million pound pot for the best self-published book of the year (or maybe even the best unsigned ebook - and, by the way, where ARE the ebook only awards? hmmmmmm - and hires a team of rockstars as judges.

Just a guess. And trust me - one of them WILL happen. Within 18 months.

Or it could be one of us.

Now there's a thought.

Thank You: some surprisingly complex netiquette

It's the thing I want to say most often in life, especially as a writer. Yes, even more than, "sorry, you must send me the dry cleaning bill". In fact, I lose count of the times i want to say thank you in any one day.

Take yesterday. Someone in the publishing industry agreed to look at my book and help me find places to send it for review; an author I greatly admire had a personal word with a magazine editor who then requested a review copy; a bookstore owner agreed to take my book sale or return; a website host posted a great big plug for my book; a blogger I hugely admire gave me a link; most of all, more than one person who's read my stuff sent me a lovely message. I want to buy them ALL milk and cookies and hire the Red Arrows to write thank you in the sky.

But it's not that simple. Thank you is a minefield for a writer.

Let me start with some very bad practice, and it might help you also to see the problem with seemingly good practice. Book blog tours seem to be all the rage at the moment. Or maybe it just seems it because there's a particularly interesting thread on the subject on the excellent Help Supprt Indpendent Publishers group on Facebook.

Maybe it's just me but one thing I've noticed is just how many writers on blog tours, or giving interviews on websites, attract comments from readers, and questions, which are met with a stony silence.

Now, pardon me for being old fashioned, but that's RUDE. And before authors chime in with "you're unpublished, you don't know how busy it is" (true, and also true [but try working a 37.5 hour week, running a festival, coordinating a collective, launching a book single-handed, AND trying to revolutionise an industry]), I KNOW how busy you are, but that's not an excuse. In practical terms, you actually lose readers as well as gaining them (and remember the old adage about one complaint needing nine bits of praise to balance it out. That's not just true in restaurants). But aside from that, don't take it on if you can't manage the courtesy of engaging with the readers when you do. These people are your RAISON D'ETRE. And it's not just that. It's incredibly rude to the blog host, who has to pick up the pieces of disgruntled readers and explain why their star guest bailed half way.

OK, that's a pet peeve out of the way. Do you see the other thing that would have been really rude of me? In the context of calling people who act like this a SUPERCILIOUS PLANK (as I believe I said in a bilious tweet last night :-))?

That's right. It would have been REALLY rude of me to name names.

Which brings me back to the business of when and how you DO say thank you. Take the first two instances. In both cases, I want to say thank you publicly. Because surely that's the greatest honour for someone, and gives them the best rep, the biggest kudos, right? Well, yes, BUT. If I say "Thank you for agreeing to read my book" to someone who's hugely busy and has done it as a favour (either to me or to a fairy godmother of whom I know nothing), they're not going to thank me back when 200 requests to do likewise arrive in their inbox.

So I send a grateful e-mail, right? Well, it's not that simple. Only the other day I was reading tweets by a Well Known But Nameless Agent who complained that authors are stalkers and, in not too many words "get out of my inbox" and certainly "if we've given something, go away and don't come back and bother us again." So the last thing I want to do if WKBNA does a kindness for me is to hack them off by sending a long e-mail thanking them and clogging their inbox. Nor do I want to seem curt. It's a minefield. (In this case, my advice is be thankful for one thing; never ask a second but say yes if it's offered; DO send a thank you that's friendly and personal, wishing well for a current project; I wouldn't offer to "let them know how it goes" - my guess is this will make them feel pressured to reply, which is bad - if they REALLY want to know they'll ask, but chances are they don't, so not offering spares embarrassment).

Which brings us to the nicest category. Readers, and fellow-writers. These are people who have approached you. So you needn't worry you're bothering them (that's NOT a stalker's charter). It goes without saying you MUST say thank you. It also, and this is important, because if you're not careful you can end up with no time to write, and that's actually what people really want from you, should go without saying that you can't, even though you'd like to, be everyone's lifecoach. You need to have boundaries, and to make those clear (which is NOT to say some, probably many, readers and fellow-writers won't become friends, possibly lifelong. I would hope they will. But that shouldn't be the expectation from your initial contact - that's THEIR stalker's charter). On the other hand, if you can do something to help, I really believe you should. That means much more than the words "thank you". You could offer to host them on your blog; or look at a short story; or put them onto a helpful website.

Yes, again. I KNOW you're busy. And I know it's easy fro me because I don't really have any fans. But remember those times before you were famous, when you were met with silence? Remember the mutterings under your breath. And remember the one person who showed you even a bit of kindness? I bet you DO. And don't EVER forget it.

Which brings me to a general observation. One of the most important articles ever written about culture (or business) can be found here. Kevin Kelly's basic premise is that you only need 1,000 true fans to sustain your business/life as a writer. I happen to think he's right (I'm not getting into that argument here). Now 1,000 is NOT a huge number. Certainly not if, like me, you write 50-100 e-mails a day. One reason I like 1,000 true fans is because it's a way of being that allows you to engage with everyone who's a fan of yours. And if you're a writer, someone who communicates, that's really how it should be, isn't it?

The View From the Shoe: Susan Green

Susan Green does something dear to the hearts of writers and craftspeople alike. She makes notebooks. Exquisite, handmade notebooks and journals. In her own words:

Hello Dan, hello everyone reading Dan’s View From The Shoe. I’m Susan Green, and I’m writing this from my home in rural Dorset, UK which is also where I work. I’m a bookbinder; I make new notebooks from scratch, by hand. They’re all robust sorts of books because I want them to be good and faithful servants to you. It’s no use having to fight with or appease your notebook – you have to be able to rely upon it not to get in your way when you’re about your business of writing and drawing.

I make Hardback Journals with leather spines and decorative covers; Medieval Sketchbooks which are softer, looser, altogether more laid back affairs; Travel Journals which are similarly-dispositioned but more suggestive, prompting you to detail your adventures; and then there are the Miniatures that have that bijou/cute vibe and that politely fit in the smallest of spaces.
You can find more info on my website http://www.susangreenbooks.co.uk
Shop online at Etsy: http://susangreenbooks.etsy.com/
And on Folksy: http://susangreenbooks.folksy.com/
And I’m on Twitter: https://twitter.com/susangreenbooks
And other places too, using the same username: susangreenbooks

Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
You’re most welcome and you’re very kind for having me and my Converse. They’re the ones that masquerade as slippers, having no laces and a comforting warmth. Thankfully they’re more attractive than slippers, and don’t go soggy in the rain.

Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
Well, they say that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, and I think they’re probably right, and I think that’s what makes my books different from other people’s. I started off with what I had to hand. Fortunately, that was a lovely independent fabric warehouse called Hansons in Sturminster Newton, Dorset. It’s something of a Mecca for those who stitch and sew and there I found a huge selection of cotton fat quarters in an overwhelming selection of patterns. I figured out how to turn them into bookcloth, and began partnering them with co-ordinating leather to make my Hardback Journals.

Then serendipity struck again in a decisive pincer movement: firstly my partner decided to get rid of her sofa. She took a knife to it and gave me many lengths of amazingly soft, patinated chestnut-coloured leather. Secondly, I wanted to make her a full-leather Hardback Journal with the sofa leather as a thank you gift. But I had injured my wrist and was having great difficulty paring the leather down to the thinness required for the French joints I use. So I gave up, had a think, and decided to learn a Medieval style of binding that has a limp leather cover that didn’t require strong wrists. Fortunately she loved the resulting book and although I was sceptical, it turns out many people really love recycled leather, especially the kind whose marks hint (and/or loudly declaim) at its previous existence. And so my Medieval Sketchbooks were born. They’re different from everybody else’s Medieval bindings because I use a modern method of keeping them closed – a magnetic tab than doubles up as a penholder. Historical! Modern! Recycled! Doubly useful! Hurrah!

What do you really, really love about it?
The beginning and end are the really fun bits – the excitement of a new design, and the joy of packaging a book up prettily to send to a place on the globe I’ve never been, into the hands of someone who will put clever, creative things on its pages, or who will give it to someone they really love. The almost obsessive precision and neatness required to make the mechanics function correctly. The rhythmical and meditative folding, tearing, folding, tearing of the paper. That I get to bring into being something that never existed before. It’s awesome.
A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
More time in the day, please. It’s important to have balance and I think with more time, I’d somehow remember to water my plants, meditate, read the stacks of books I have piled up in various places and write proper letters again.

Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
After being woken by a loving horde of dogs, I take a little walk down to a café on the harbour. There’s my usual outside table underneath bone-softening, mind-slowing sunshine. A selection of newspapers and journals. My notebook to doodle, write, plan and design in. Fresh fruit. Coffee. Croissants. Pain au Chocolat. More coffee. A leisurely affair. Knowing that afterwards the whole world is there, waiting to be enjoyed.

What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
Leather. Glossy, smooth, amazing-smelling, refined, exuberant, supple, sensuous.
Plastic. Hard, brash, unforgiving, brittle, cold and I imagine, if it were a person, rather mean.

Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
The gleeful, childlike excitement people often express on receiving their books always puts a massive spring in my step and boosts my desire to do more of the same as well as to innovate.

Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Oh, the former, no contest. You set your own goals and deadlines. You have time to contemplate, to experiment, to spend with people, to watch the world go by and be taken by surprise.

Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Whaaaaaa... okay. It would have to be Sandra Bullock - I reckon she’d be really expressive with her hands. Or maybe Rolf Harris, because he could do noises as well.

Frocks or socks?
Both, when the weather is inclement.

Thank you SOOO much
Thank you kindly, Dan!

10 Commandments for Aspiring Writers

This is an extra post that's really just a reprise. When I first started this blog and had about 3 followers, I began a series called "10 commandments for aspiring writers in 2009". Virtually no one read it because virtually no one knew I was here, but some people who did kind of liked it, so I'm reprising with links here. It's also a nice way of leading in to a new series I'm going to be running in the autumn, a 12-step programme to help writers intending to make a serious attempt at a career of it, starting in 2010, hit the ground running with a proper business plan.

So here, goes, my 10 commandmets are:

1.There is no stigma about self-publishing

2.Marketing is something small groups of like-minded writers can in many ways do better than big publishers

3.By the time the recession’s over the publishing houses will be playing catch-up with the new literary business models that emerge in the meanwhile

4.The internet is SOO much more than just another way of getting the same old type of book published

5.Don’t be afraid to give your work away for free.

6.Modern technology cuts out the barriers between readers and writers and brings prose back to life

7.Writing is not a zero-sum game – far from making my success LESS likely, your success makes it MORE likely, so cooperation between writers is a good thing.

8.Money follows innovation

9.Networking is about looking for ways to do something FOR people, not get something FROM them.

10.Writers need to think like musicians and artists; we need to be showmen and women, to work in the public eye.

When I wrote the series I was new at this, and probably too brash, but I think a lot of the points remain valid, and I certainly hope there's at least a bit of useful advice there. Here are the opening lines of, and links to, the separate posts on each commandment.

1. In many ways this debate is already tired. Some writers will never take self-publishing seriously. For others the “stigma of self-publishing” isn’t an issue that figures on the radar. [Read more]

2. Marketing is something small groups of like-minded writers can in many ways do better than big publishersIf there’s one reason writers give more than any other why they don’t want to self-publish, it’s marketing. [Read more]

3. Please note, there are no value judgements in this post. I’m not saying publishing has to change, or ought to change – nor am I saying the current way is bad, or that we are stepping into Utopia. I’m simply saying what I think WILL happen. [read more]

4. Blogs have turned the internet into some kind of noisy Hobbesian nightmare. Twitter has quietened the noise to a series of feint coughs, but the effect is the same – now everyone has something to say and no one has any time to listen. We are all participants; we are all producers; the consumer is dead. [Read more]

5. I’m not going to mention The Pirate Bay in this article. Not once. Except for that, of course. If you want my opinion on the record, it’s this – my only thought as I read the coverage was how sad it was that everything was about file-sharing games, music, videos. [Read more]

6. A lot’s been made of the democratising effect of the Internet. We live in a world where we can all be producers of culture. Anyone with Internet access can set up a blog and pour out their soul. And it takes little more than a mobile phone and to that you can add sound, picture, and film to the “we’re all at it now” package. [Read more]

7. Writing is not a zero-sum game – far from making my success LESS likely, your success makes it MORE likely, so cooperation between writers is a good thing.This column is probably as low on content and high on rhetoric as I intend to get in this series. I want to address an issue that’s vexed me ever since I started participating in online writers’ groups at the very start of 2008, after reading a little snippet in the Writers and Artists Yearbook about youwriteon.com. [Read more]

8. One of the questions I’m most often asked when I explain what I’m doing is “How are you going to make any money doing that?” Actually, it’s not usually phrased quite that way – more “it’s all right for you, but we’ve got bills to pay” or less family-friendly rewordings of the same sentiment. [Read more]

9. This is my favourite commandment of all, and I’m delighted to save it till last in this series. We’re always reading about networking. Anyone who’s part of a writers’ site like Authonomy knows that success has so much to do with spreading your social tentacles, and we’re always being urged to use social media to increase our contacts and improve our chances of success [Read more]

10. Writers need to think like musicians and artists; we need to be showmen and women, to work in the public eye, and to make our money from selling an experience rather than a piece of hardware. [Read more]

When I first started the series, I thought number 9 was the most important commandment by far. Nothing's changed, although I think 7 is pretty high up there. What the past few months have enforcd are the supreme value of cooperation between writers.

Do let me know which you think is most important, and where I'm totally off-beam.

Grow your own little demon

Socrates claimed he had a little demon on his shoulder, whispering in his ear, telling him what to do. No, he hadn't been reading too much Philip Pulman. Nor been watching too many horror films. It was actually the birth of the idea of conscience, that little voice we know we need to listen to that so often gets obscured by all the flatteries and temptations of life.

As human beings we all need a decent conscience. As writers, the Bohemina in us likes to think we can do without. But we all need to cultivate one of those little demons, the quiet voice of the inner editor.

When I first took the plunge and joined writers' critiquing site Youwriteon, about the only thing I knew was that as a writer I needed a thick skin. And the way to show you have a thick skin is to listen to criticism - and you show you are listening by following advice. Besides, what did I know!

Result? What most cynical writers I know call editing by committee/consensus. Only there never is a consensus, so you end up with draft after draft after draft. And eventually you end up with...

You've got it. A headache. And a bit of a mess. And probably writers' block because you're terrified what'll come next.

After a few months, and some success on Youwriteon, I joined what I still think is the best critiquing site in cyberspace, The Bookshed. I was cock-a-hoop because you ahve to apply to get in. And with cock-a-hoopness come cockiness. I went in looking for a fight (as much as a big soft hippy ever goes "looking for a fight"), and my fight of chioce was "the rules". We all know that one, right? From "you need to know the rules to break them" to "rules are there to stifle creativity". So I'd take comments about my plotting and structure. And I'd do the opposite. And I'd rail about the stupidity of rules.

And the result? Well, at the time I thought of it as a postmodern masterpiece. Others saw the 6 narrator, no timeline "thing" that was the first draft of Songs from the Other Side of the Wall as "a bit confused." And guess who was right!

And then, when I got my critique from Harper Collins after successfully getting to "The Editor's Desk" on Authonomy, something happened. I read the crit through, and thought "you know what, that's right." (the editor had very politely pointed out a "certain amount" of introspection on my protag's behalf). And I looked back at other critiques, and started thinking, "that's right" and "that isn't".

I'm a long way from honing "my voice" or, indeed, actually knowing the first thing about this writing business. But I've started hearing that little voice inside every time someone says something about my work. I'm sure it's mostly wrong at the moment, but I hear it and, as with our conscience, we can only go with what we sincerely hear.

The key is to keep listening - and to train it by keeping on submitting ourselves to scrutiny, and to let those external voices and that internal one spark off each other in a dialectic that leaves your little demon a little louder and a little wiser each time.

So my advice. Ask advice from everyone. Consider everything. Listen to everyone. Hard. Until the voice you hear loudest is your own.

All of which is rather like what psychologists these days say about conscience - that we begin in ignorance, grow up dependent on rules, as teenagers rebel against the lot of them, then finally develop oour own take on the world. If there's one thing we need to do as writers, it's take a good look at where we are on that continuum, and keep kicking ourselves in the backsides till we come out as the fully mature end product. Only then will we begin to get to grips with "voice" and "style" all those other questions.

Go on, nurture that little demon, and see where it takes you!

Patroned by the People: A Very Old New Way of Making a Living

We all dream of it, don’t we? Living the life of Mozart, Michelangelo, or Moliere, practising our culture under the beneficent patronage of some European noble. Only of course it wasn’t like that. It was more like being George Michael working under Sony.

What I want to do is breathe new life into the patronage model, and see if I can make it work for 21st century producers of culture. There are models that come close: bursaries awarded by bodies like the Arts Council, or private institutions pay someone to do their stuff out of the public or private purse; laureateships empower someone to work on behalf of the people; many august cultural bodies – theatres, orchestras etc. – allow donors to become members.

But none of that quite does what I want to do. First and obviously – er, they don’t pay me! Second, and most important, they don’t match the ideological principles of my personal manifesto: Free is good; Culture is a direct conversation between artist and audience.

So this is what I’ve come up with.
1. Decide the amount you need to live on. In my case, with my debts and commitments, I think I could live more than comfortably on £35,000.

2. Work out what your working year is in terms of hours. I make my working year 2660 hours.

3. Make all your work available for free.

4. Allow people to make payments should they wish, and show the running total on your website.
5. Devote half your working hours to taking up commissions from your patrons, and the other half to producing the stuff all your fans love. Effectively, let your patrons buy you by the hour. Make sure they understand you will keep writing your kind of thing, but that you will produce shorts, poems, etc on subjects of their choice, or go and speak at their events, give them writing lessons, produce blog copy, edit their work, whatever you want to offer! My only rules would be my ideology’s mine, and I will only promote what I really like (I won’t do my patrons’ PR).
6. Keep a record of what you do, for how long, online – which in itself may be of interest

So that’s the model. Who’s up for tearing it down?

The View From the Shoe: Penny Goring

This week, I’ve been talking to writer Penny Goring. I met Penny through The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, and since then we’ve been bumping into each other on various writing sites, as well as in the twitterverse. Her writing is both brilliant and utterly unlike anything else. She also took me at my word when I said if the questions weren’t the ones she wanted to be asked, she could answer the questions of her choice, without specifying what they are.

In her own words:
I make odd machines called stories.
e-mail: pennybibi@hotmail.co.uk
twitter: @triplecherry
facebook.com/penny.goring

And without further ado:

Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
Styrofoam cup with a dog-end in it.

Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
Cinema usherette, deep-sea diver - I'm interested in how we think. Sniffed glue on trains after the police raided No.4, fifty black eyes, one cauliflower ear, dodgy photographs of pieces of her: her first love, her last drink, her ambition, her ear lobe, her shame. Bag lady, suit of flesh, prison issue bra. Her Dad a sex and love addict, her mum a sacrifice.

What do you really, really love about it?
Stealing moments in the correction cell, what I love is what escapes me. She patrols the swamps by night, her saving grace in the room with tiled floor and custard-coloured walls. You moved to Upper Street so we hung out in Highbury Cemetery. I've still got the round satin cushion with pom-poms sprouting from it's plump centre. Waifs and strays, London slums, malevolent, copulating insects with teeth.

A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
On my way home from the underbelly I saw faulty-six blue things, four legs and a fantasy. This was after thirteen years of rejecting a world which anaesthetises minds to optimise profitability. I hit rock bottom, a washed up tantalus in the crab position courting a storm-tossing merman, supine with multi-dick, paddling in the overflow of an ultrascan.

Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
Invalid Dessert No.1
Liver Souffle

Half cup stale breadcrumbs
1 egg yolk
2oz sieved raw liver
Lemon
1 tbspn cream

Mix crumbs with liver in basin. Stir in a few drops of lemon juice.
Beat in egg white, place in buttered mould.
Cover with buttered paper.
Steam for 20 mins.
Serve with sauce if allowed.

This recipe is for one person.


What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
Wish box, witch box, addict box, lunch box, shoe box, black box, the history of orgies, stacked. Things that are difficult to grasp and easy to imagine. Sky is always a fiction.
Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
God's gilded bollock's and the best snog ever. All those out-moded words looming like the block of flats he fell from, sporting red devil headgear. Death too big and too stupid to argue with. Armies of soft toys, mountains of dogs, barrage balloons floating with ducks in the shape of swan songs.

Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Crowding the edge of vision, framed by symbols - tiny block-capitals on thin paper, squashed in desperation, frantic, insistent, alone in a cloud of smoke. Fishing for an alter ego, mind boggling with the amazing glut. Is it true I don't feel anymore? Role-play aspect important, but I'm still a woman on her knees.

Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
I don't have a sales pitch. For my sins, I would have the monolith from 2001 behind me, Enid Blyton and Joseph Beuys either side of me and the ghosts of my friends and lovers right up front, because there's no safety in words.

Frocks or socks?
Evasive adopted evacuee shivering at the zebra-crossing.


Thank you SOOO much

Free is not a Four-letter word

Well, I couldn’t really stay out of the debate, although I’ve already blogged at length about the value of giving writing away for free. The release of Chris Anderson’s “Free” and resultant hoo-ha (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6670080.html?desc=topstory) is too much of a happening for me not to write again. I’ve already posted a few thoughts on
http://loudpoet.com/2009/07/06/free-is-wrong-for-writers-freemium-might-not-be/#comment-12230088

I’ll keep this brief as a result. The last thing I want is “Dan going on about free stuff” fatigue. I’ll also try and keep it opinionated because facts seem to be out of fashion in this debate. Personally, I just don’t understand the objection as a business model to so-called “freemium” promotion – offering a basic version of your product for free, and charging for a premium version. Music practitioners have used the model so successfully I’m not sure I can see the negative argument.

Which suggests to me the argument is ideological. People who are excited about the freemium model are, by and large, people who have day jobs and want the chance to give them up and be paid for doing what they love. People who object tend to be those who are already paid to write. I understand that people don’t want to lose their livelihoods. Of course they don’t, and of course none of us wants them to. But protectionism isn’t the answer.

Literature is a breeding ground of innovation, and should remain so. And the public should have access to as wide a range of culture as there is out there. I believe they should be able to access it for free, and decide, from a position of knowledge not ignorance, which of it they want to spend their money on.

The argument that this will pollute the cultural world with rubbish is just nonsense. If what’s offered for free outside the establishment is junk, the public will discard it, and no one in the mainstream will lose their paycheck. If some of it DOES turn out to be better, then why shouldn’t some on the “inside” take a pay cut so that some on the outside can have a slice of the pie?

My call to action is simple. Make your work available to the public for free download. Let readers decide what they want to pay for. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the beginning of an aspiration to take culture seriously. That’s why I started Free-e-day (www.freeeday.wordpress.com) as a platform to bring together givers and takers of free cultural content. I also see it across the web in great initiatives like www.jet-pack.net

Free isn’t a four-letter word. Free is good. For the producers of culture. For the consumers of culture. For culture itself. Come and embrace freevolution

Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair

Year Zero Writers has released its first sampler anthology, Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair. It's 13 pieces of contemporary fiction, a mix of short stories and extracts from ourt work to introduce us to readers, and hopefully tempt people to our novels when they come out later in the year. It's also free. You can download a copy from here. You can also read it in full at our website, where you can also find out more about us. Do help yourself to a copy, and pass it on. And I'll keep you all updated how it goes. On Friday: why an anthology?

B**B AD

Hmm. Was gonna say it but I can't bear the thought of the spam-magnet effect it'll have. So substitute asterisks for "o"s :-)

This is the “what we’re up to” column. Feel free to treat it with schadenfreude as the “I told you so” column, to see it as an interesting reference point, or if you so wish as the place to cheer us on (we like that one!)

B**BAD sounds rather rude. It stands for Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair, which at this moment is the title of the collective’s sampler, due to be launched on an unsuspecting world on July 1st. I say at this moment because we’re a collective. So decisions come hard. We love each other and we’re all rather enamoured of our hippy credentials. Which means when we have two names on the table (the other is Zero Cuts – I like both, but they say completely different things – one is whimsical, intriguing, smacking of fragility and quality; the other is exciting, edgy, smacks of the new) two names sometimes stay on the table :p

Whatever it’s called, we’ve put together a really rather whizzy sampler of work, containing contributions from 13 of us. Some of us have given short stories, others extracts from the books they’re going to be publishing as part of the collective later on.

There were two driving forces behind the format. The first was to get readers slathering for our prose. That goes without saying – the main approach people have taken with this is to give pieces that aren’t necessarily their most polished or publishable, but are most distinctively them. Which is exactly what’s needed. I’m fed up with reading perfectly-crafted flat prose.

Second was length. We didn’t want to create a book. We are not a business and don’t want (well, OK, I don’t want – I may have forced this bit onto people :p) financial macramé getting in the way of things. So the idea of producing a collection that we published and all took tiny cuts of royalties from was a definite no-no. Plus, it goes against the whole marketing (and collective) ethos I’ve been expounding for the past few months of giving stuff away. So the idea was to produce something short enough that if people wanted to make it into a physical object they could print it from their desktop (something made centrally likewise doesn’t work when you have members in the UK, USA, Dubai, Finland, France and Hong Kong!!). Mostly, though, we’ll be giving away the pdf.

So that’s the centre of our attention at the moment. That and working on our guerrilla marketing campaign (I think guerrilla marketing’s great, but one of those things that if you don’t get it spot on, you end up wasting vast swathes of time, so we’ve got a group working on perfecting some really great ideas we came up with during a brainstorming session – there’ll be a how-to on that: it was incredible, we got way over 100 posts with some fantastic ideas). So what I’m doing at the moment is chasing down bios for people, trying to write some press releases, and not worrying about the fact we don’t yet have a cover!! Cancel that last bit. In the two days since I wrote this we do have a cover. An absolutely fantastic one, courtesy of the vastly over-talented Larry Harrison.

Who are Year Zero?

There are 20 of us, ranging from the shy who work behind the scenes for the time being to the media floosies amongst us like Oli and I. I think the number we have is about right for what we’re doing, and the way we work, which is as democratic as possible without grinding to a total standstill. Given that at any one time half of us will be busy, any fewer and nothing would ever get done (and we wouldn’t have the range of skills to draw on). Given that there will always be differences of opinion, any more and, er, nothing would ever get done.

So how did we end up with us? Well, there are two questions there. How did we end up with anyone? And how come it’s us 20 not another 20? And the most important thing, given this isn’t just a piece of navel-gazing but actually intended to be of some use if you decide you’d like to do something similar, is how should you go about choosing the members of your collective?

So let’s start with us. Well, as with 99% of these things, most of it just sort of fell into place a bit chaotically. So if you’re reading this for tips you’re already well ahead of where we were! At the end of 2008 a number of us on a couple of my favourite online writing sites, Harper Collins’ Authonomy, and the critiquing group The Book Shed, started talking about the future of publishing, and the possibilities new technology offered for outflanking the established industry (the exact ins and outs are another post altogether), and we realised there was a great chance for a group of niche-focused, motivated writers with some great books. Fortunately, because I was the gobbiest, I got let off the last of these requirements.

So when, in January, I announced I was going to start a collective, there was a preformed constituency to choose from, consisting of all of us who’d been talking. I seriously doubt, if any of us had simply announced we were starting something from scratch and begun approaching people, we’d have got anywhere fast. As with everything in the creative world, these things are built on relationships. And that’s a good thing, especially if you’re doing it online, because you’ve got to be absolutely sure you’re getting on board with the right people.

Most of our membership came by that route. But there were a couple of places left to fill, which meant approaching people. So how on earth do you decide whom to approach? Well, the obvious disqualifier is forum behaviour. I think I can genuinely say this didn’t affect us. Possibly because it was back in what now seem the halcyon days of beautifully-etiquetted threads, possibly because I’m a gullible twit, I didn’t ever think, “Ooh, I want their book, but no, they’re a prize plonker.” It’s certainly the main bit of advice I’d give, though. I’d never deal with someone I’d witnessed trolling or flaming or partaking in any other jargonese metaphor. No matter how good their book. It’s something I say a lot on forums when people moan and moan about not getting an agent. If I were an agent looking through the forums, that alone would rule out working with them. And if I were an agent – or someone starting a collective – I WOULD look.

So how did we decide? Well, it was quite simple. First off, like any agent or publisher, we wanted books that had a voice. Most important of all for a collective, though, is that you all fit quite a tight niche. The reasoning’s simple. The advantage of a collective is that you’ve got lots of people to work targeting the same market any one of you would have to reach on your own. You’re divvying up the chores, and building a brand people in that market can come to trust. As soon as you have books that push the limit of the niche, you’re expanding the workload not focusing it. And whilst there will obviously be books you like more than others in an imprint, in order to create brand loyalty you have to consistently hit the same buttons, so people know what kind of read they’re in for.

We already hand some brand identity because we had – if not at that stage a manifesto – a set of rallying principles: we were going to deliver books as the authors wanted them to appear, unedited to fit preconceptions of taste and market. We were, essentially, a bit anarchic and 100% indie. Which created its own problems – if you’re not dictating content, how do you ensure brand identity?

What actually emerged from some soul-searching was that we were all doing the same kind of thing for the same kind of people. We were writing slightly edgy contemporary literary fiction (the kind of book the publishing industry isn’t geared up to deal with because the market is just a bit too small), and we were writing it for an urban indie audience – the kind of book you’d see people reading while they sat on Camden Lock smoking; the kind of book people would take out of the back pocket of their skinnies on the Tube.

The authors we approached had to be the ones who wrote this kind of thing.

The reaction, at both stages, was mixed. Which was a good thing because we didn’t end up with 100 people in the group. But a bad thing because we missed out on a couple of the books we really wanted. The reason why was usually – and completely understandably – the same. People either wanted to see how we got on before committing. Or they wanted to exhaust other avenues first. So where does that leave us with regard to them? Well, my personal approach is the door’s always open. The right books, written by lovely people, are always welcome. Yes, I have a list. There are between 10 and 20 names on it. I hope for their sake they don’t come to us, because that would mean they’ve made it. But I hope for our sake they do.

We’re not taking on new people at the moment (the exceptions being those on “the list”) partly because we’ve been through a huge amount together and – despite being based in the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Spain, Greece, Finland, and France – have knitted into an incredibly strong group. Now is the wrong time to unbalance that and risk losing focus. It wouldn’t be fair on newcomers either. Anyone joining up this close to a major release would have to just accept a whole lot of things we’ve agonised over and just aren’t up for negotiation any more.

But once the first books are out there and, I hope, flourishing, that’ll change. Our membership isn’t cast in stone. People are free to leave, and take their book with them, at any time. We are the antithesis of a record label. We are all self-publishers. We have no financial or intellectual property ties to each other. We can come and go as we please. We’ve made sure to make this freedom of movement clear in our Articles of Association.

How do I see us evolving? Well, people will come and go, and I imagine in 10 years we will look very different. I don’t even know if there will be a core membership. But Year Zero will be the same, and its strength will be the same – a commitment to giving readers the very best contemporary fiction, straight from the author’s keyboard; a commitment to building the trust and respect between writers and their readers.

Free-e-day. The World's biggest indie culture online expo & giveaway

Free-e-day, the world’s biggest cultural giveaway

http://freeeday.wordpress.com/
search free-e-day on Facebook and join the group

What is Free-e-day?

Free-e-day is 1 December 2009

Free-e-day 2009 is the biggest ever cultural electronic giveaway & celebration of the independent creative spirit.

Free-e-day is for every singer, writer, artist, artisan, photographer, film-maker, whatever who believes that the most important part of culture is the fans. And it’s for everyone who loves culture and wants to experience the very best of it, or just try out something new, for free.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone and anyone to give some of their work away for free, as a thank you to their current fans, and a present for their new ones.

Free-e-day is the world’s biggest showcase for the massive, indomitable, indestructible, joyful, independent creative spirit of the human race.

Free-e-day is the chance for everyone to discover the most exciting culture the whole world has to offer.

Who can take part in free-e-day?

Anyone can join the group. You don’t have to be giving something away; you just have to think it’s a good idea.

And anyone can give their stuff away. If you’ve ever written anything you’re a writer. If you’ve ever sung anything you’re a singer. The established industries might tell you what you’re not. We believe in celebrating what you are.

How do I take part in free-e-day?

All you need to do to participate in the spirit of Free-e-day is give something away for free on 1 December 2009, or take something that’s being given away.

On the other hand, we want to make this the biggest, shiniest, most fantabulistic cultural giveaway ever, so, if you want to give something away:

Sign up to our Facebook group. That way we can put a number on it and show the world just how many of us there are.

• Post your name, what you do, and 32 words about yourself.
  Include up to 8 tag words to make it easy for people to find your stuff
  
• Post a link to somewhere you’ll be giving something away. It has to be something people can take away and keep. A pdf, a jpeg, an MP3 or MP4 file.
  
• Tell us what you’ll be giving away
  
• Make sure, come free-e-day on 1 December, you put up your freebie. If you don’t have the tech to do that, you can give people an e-mail address instead of a URL, but make sure you send your thing by the end of 1 December.
  
• If you have some way of doing something live, let us know what, when, where, in the same format as above
  
• Don’t post more than one plug. It’s rude. And it’s unoriginal
  
  If you get something fantastic on Free-e-day, remember to tell us. Remember to tell the lovely people who gave it to you. And most of all, remember to tell everyone you know.
  
  If you want to speak to me about Free-e-day, whether you want to publicise it, get a quote, offer moral support, volunteer to do something, or even tell me to p*** off and make people pay for things, send me an e-mail: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
  
  So What’s Gonna happen?
  
• I’m going to turn the free-e-day website into a directory with sections for:
  · Music
  · Writing
  · Film
  · Photography
  · Art
  · Pot luck (you can put anything here if you prefer people to come across your stuff serendipitously)
  · Craft
  · Live Shows
  If I’ve left anything out let me know.
• I’ll paste everyone’s details over, including the links.
• I’ll paste your links as you post them, but it’s your job to make sure they work. There’s only one of me!
• This needs to be a live – and living – event. So from midnight on one side of the world to the following midnight on the other, there should be events
  A 48-hour long open to all webchat
• Workshops. Some of the most important things anyone can give are experience, time, and advice. This is a day for fans, but with so many people around, it’s a great chance to host a workshop to help your colleagues
• Live events – online and in real life. If you’d like to offer a live show as part of Free-e-day, the only criteria are that it’s held on the right day, and that it’s free. Anyone hosting an event will be sent some free e-files with media releases and logos nearer the time. Just let us know.
• Whatever your social media of choice, make sure Free-e-day is what people are talking about. And make sure, come December 1st, everyone’s giving and getting a whole load of stuff for free
  
  How can you make this a sparkle in the cultural firmament?

Volunteer to do something. I’ll need help with the following:

• Admin. If this is going to be a big event I won’t be able to do all the cutting and pasting and sorting. I’ll need help.
• Publicity. Point anyone and everyone to our website and our group. I’m up for interviews and all kinds of publicity.
• Hosting – care to host the webchat for an hour? Or to host a workshop advising and answering questions from the people who work in your area – or another?
• Tech. There are probably things out there I need I have no idea I need. If you’re willing to offer it/your time for free, let me know. I’m sure at some stage, to paraphrase a certain Spielberg movie, we’re going to need a bigger website. If you can offer that, supertastic!
  
  I’d love to think we’ll get lots of coverage. If you come across any publicity anywhere, send me the link – to the Facebook site, by e-mail, or to the website, and we’ll build a great big bumper archive
  Send me an e-mail if you’d like to volunteer: songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
  
  
  Free-e-day Against Spoilsport Twits
  
• Spam sucks. Everyone needs to put food in their mouths. Some of us do that by selling stuff. Fans love to buy stuff. But not on Free-e-day.
  
• Plagiarism really sucks. If you’re giving stuff away, make sure it’s yours. Its’ not up to us to make sure it’s yours to give away. It’s up to you
• If you’re with us you’re with us. If any nice people in the press and stuff give us some inches, we can say you’re on board.
• Viruses and worms and other terms borrowed from questionable if ecologically essential branches of the tree of life and metonymously applied to inanimate scuz beyond suck. I’m not responsible for what you put out, but if you do that kind of stuff there’s a whole bunch of people gonna like you not very much.
  
  
  Oh, and any ideas – e-mail me, post them on the facebook group, or add a comment on the website