May 18, 2012

I am literally only posting this to assuage my guilt

Wow, just realised my last post was nearly two months ago, so this is more of a guilt posting than anything. I’ve got a couple of things I want to write here when I’ve got time, but since the prize all my words have been eaten up by my novel and work experience. It’s been funny couple of months, there’s been some nice moments, but also the fifth funeral I’ve had to attend in a year and a month, and my wobbly pile of job rejections is only growing. To be honest, the book is pretty much the only thing that’s going well in my life at present. Apparently the summer is a terrible time to pitch, so my agent has set me a deadline of mid-late June, it’s possible but is going to require literally locking myself in a room and shackling myself to the keyboard. Oh well.

Bring it on hermit-dom!

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March 29, 2012

Agented

So I’ve signed on the dotted line. Slipped the contract into an envelope. Taken it to a post office. All of which means that I now have an agent. At least, I did all of that a week ago today, I’ve been delaying blogging about it in the hope that something profound or insightful might occur to me, but all I have are disjointed thoughts and emotions. So sorry if this post is a little incoherent and rambling, but I can’t get a clearer perspective on it right now.

The first thing that strikes me about agents is how similar and yet different they are to authors. The past year and a half I’ve been dealing almost exclusively with writers. We’re an odd breed with our own quirks, but they’re quirks I understand. So it’s bizarre hearing an agent talk about books, to hear them discuss exactly the same objects that preoccupy my life, yet with such a different slant that it’s almost an entirely new discourse. Admittedly I’ve only ever interacted with a handful of agents, but what I’ve noticed more than anything is how important it is for them to draw links between books and pinpoint exactly where a novel might fit into the market. Almost as if a book’s identity and worth comes from its place within the wider tapestry. Of course it makes sense, just as a gardener and a woodcutter will look at a tree in a different way, so must a writer and an agent – the same object has a different aura of significance, a different ready-to-handness, within their separate personal worlds of experience. Yet it’s been an eye-opener to have my novel talked of in that way. My book has been my one and only, ‘The Book’, for so long that I almost forgot that part of the aim is to get it out there into part of a wider literary tradition. I’ve been existing in a weird of bubble of literary solipsism. So when I last went into a book shop I felt a bit sick to look at all those shelves and shelves of books and think that one day it might sit amongst them. It made me realise how tiny my book is. I’ve poured so much time and sweat and blood into it, but compared to the hundreds of thousands of books in the ocean of artistic suffering, it’s nothing but a tiny drop. Now walking around Waterstones fills me with a kind of dread. I can’t help but feel that if I release my defenceless little book in the it’ll sink amongst all the other covers. How is anyone ever supposed to hear you amongst all those hundreds of clamouring voices?

Before I went to visit the agent I emailed Brain Kimberling, who won last year’s prize, for advice, and what he said to me was this: “an agent is basically someone who takes your manuscript hostage and sends ransom notes to publishers, so you want the same things from your agent that you want from a kidnapper.” At the time I thought it was a rather charming but odd analogy, but now I’m beginning to understand the emotional paradoxes present in it. On the course we’ve all been clucking pregnant mothers, talking about the first time we felt our book-babies kick, the morning sickness, how we suddenly got an urge to eat coal! Sometimes there was a set to when someone called someone else’s foetus ugly, but we were essentially always speaking the same language. But agents, publishers, people in the book industry, they’re the medical practitioners, kindly, supportive, polite, but ultimately there to wield tape measures over the author’s swollen belly, to discuss where they might make the incision. One of the most surreal things when I met my agent was that he kept calling my book by its (current) name. ‘KitSune’, ‘KitSune’, he kept saying. It was at once both flattering and a shockingly foreign idea. Until now other people have always referred to it as ‘your book’, not something with a name of its own, not something that stands apart. The manuscript I sent in was so unpolished and bitty I’m surprised that it was even coherent, but in their minds it’s already a novel, something they can sell. Of course I’m flattered, of course I’m thrilled, but a tiny part of me, the mother, wants to slap their hands away. To hiss “this book is mine. Mine.” No, more than that, “this book is me.” The idea that I could send it off into the world all by its own little self is distressing.

But what would be the point of never letting it go? What’s a baby that’s never born? Wasted, bloated potential. A perverse, tumour. Or worse, stillborn. A tragedy, limp and blue; slowly rotting back into the ether. You have to let it go if you want it to live.

It’s hard to imagine the life it might have apart from me. If it gets published that means it can go and have conversations with other people. Most will ignore it, but others might bend an ear. Of those some will hate it, hate me for creating such a thing, some though will love it. To some it might bring happiness, hope, understanding, meaning. It might even inspire book-children of its own.

I don’t know, I did say I wasn’t going to be very coherent.

I can’t help feeling I’m coming at this whole thing backwards. People keep saying to me that I ‘must be thrilled’, well, I guess I am, but it’s not as simple as that. Before the meeting friends who had already had agents told me how marvelous and jubilant their first meeting was. From everything everyone said you would have thought that I was going to step out of the agent’s office and blue birds would swoop down to drape garlands of cartoonish flowers about my neck. Instead, afterwards as I waited for the coach back home, more than anything I wanted to cry. I never feel what I’m meant to.

In Sartre’s Nausea one of the characters is described as being obsessed with creating ‘perfect moments’, I didn’t really understand what he meant when I read it, but I think I possibly do now. There are no ‘perfect moments’ in human existence, no defined, crystalline minutes or hours that serve as the pinnacles of life, and chasing these illusions only leads to agony.* It makes me wonder if that’s one of the reasons why I like stories so much – because they are a string of perfect moments. At the cinema I’ll cry at anything and everything, just because the experience seems so pure, so simple, so contained, it’s almost more real than life. Real life though, is messy, it’s multifaceted, contaminated by an endless slew of just being. Maybe that’s why memories are sometimes better than the real thing, because we spin the past into a perfect little story. Maybe stories are responsible for misleading us about the nature of existence. Anyway, this all means, in a weird way, that the times when I’m supposed to be happy are the worst. Birthdays are torture, Christmas a grey space of waiting for something special to happen. They just feel like any other day, except worse, because I know that they should be particularly joyous so I end up wrapping myself into knots of disquiet over the fact that I’m not feeling what tradition tells me I should. No, for me, happiness is the ninja of the soul, it creeps up on me when I least expect it, and then disappears with even less warning. I don’t know. When I look at other people they really do seem to enjoy the big occasions. I guess some will be pretending, putting on a veneer of exaltation just because that’s what people are supposed to feel in such moments, but not everyone surely? I don’t know.

I guess I’m just odd.

* (Though to be honest I’m still not sure I entirely understand what Sartre was getting at, but I’m afraid I’m a scavenger philosopher – never too bothered about looking at the whole thing and seeing how well the work ticks over as a coherent machine, instead I focus on what little parts of the mechanism I can wrench out and scuttle off to put to use in my own ideas.)

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February 26, 2012

Why Write? : Monkey has a headache

In her fabulous book ‘The Midnight Disease’, Alice Flaherty tells a story about a friend whose job involved looking after lab monkeys. With rhesus monkeys, who are very emotive, the researcher had no problems gauging their well-being. For instance when one had a headache it would clutch its brow and look miserable. The spider monkeys, however, were much more difficult to read, for, as they are less social animals, they didn’t express pain as overtly as their Rhesus cousins. Think about it and it makes sense, if you have a social network that will run to your aid in response to your suffering, then emoting will always be beneficial, but if you are a species that doesn’t have such a network then broadcasting pain only shows weakness. Expressing suffering is therefore a product of being a social species.

The question begged therefore, is if a suffering Rhesus monkey clutches at its head, then what sort of pain expression might we observe in even more complicated and social primates? – Say those funny hairless apes with a mastery of language? Could this odd human drive to write actually be little more than an extension of monkey head clutching? Flaherty believes so.

There are many reasons for writing, but there is good evidence that the need to communicate personal suffering is one of the most important. This is most apparent in the fact that creative writing is often actively used as therapy and its cathartic effect is well documented. Having a conversation with a piece of paper, even if no other eyes shall ever see it, can be an emotional release in a similar fashion to talking to a friend. Flaherty suggests that the mechanism behind this effect relies on the release of opiates. Opiates are most commonly known as the active chemical in opium, but the brain actually produces its own endogenous opiates. These play a role in many psychological systems, but most importantly in the experience of reward and the suppression of pain. Researchers have also found that opiates are the most effective chemical for suppressing the bereavement response of a baby animal detached from its mother and that drugs that block endogenous opiates make people more sociable. In other words opiates seem to be the chemical that actives reward centres in the brain in response to positive social interaction, and thus their presence diminishes the individual’s need to communicate. It’s not a coincidence that when administered exogenously they tend to suppress the urge to write in a similar way that they decrease the drive to socialize. All of which is compelling evidence for the idea that writing is carried out, at least in part, to satisfy an individual’s need to communicate. Writing, and particularly fiction, seems to therefore have an active role in a human’s desire for social interaction to the extent that it can almost stand in for ‘real people’.

Look at it in a certain light and a story isn’t ‘just’ a story, but an act of empathy in the most extreme sense of the word. Reading is the act of losing oneself in the other of a character. Professor Keith Oatley studied this effect using neuro-imaging techniques and found that reading about the emotions of a fictional character causes mirror neurons in the brain of the reader to actually generate the same emotions. This power to evoke empathy is one of the most important roles of fiction, especially as a medium to combat prejudice against minorities by promoting understanding towards people that a reader might have responded to with anger or disgust had they met them in real life. This effect is so strong that it can even create empathy for characters that are morally ambiguous whatever one’s ethical stance. There are countless examples of anti-hero protagonists that have had me praying that they escape the law and justice (Dexter, Death Note, Crime and Punishment) even though I would probably believe them repressible outside of fiction, because the narrative has made me invest in them. For the author this power to evoke empathy is a thoroughly dizzying prospect. Through a narrative the author can not only explain her pain, but *make* the reader feel it, thus stories invite positive responses to the character’s (and through extension the author’s) suffering, because their pain becomes the reader’s too.

I realise that this might sound a little sinister, as if writing were about deflecting one’s own suffering, but that would be an over simplification. Though stories can be horribly upsetting, and sometimes in poor taste, this extended, but removed, suffering is a healthy learning experience for readers. Oatley’s argues that the mirrored brain stimulation makes people more empathic and socially intelligent because identifying with characters allows readers to “connect with something larger than themselves”. Not to mention that the reading can be just as cathartic as the writing, for through a piece of art, the author is not just creating an outlet for their own misery, but a tonic for anyone who has ever felt similarly. It is, in its most simple form, a literary hug, a message that says ‘Don’t give up hope. You are not alone’.

The empathic effect of writing can be especially vital for individuals who aren’t good at inviting empathy through the normal channels. This is maybe one of the reasons why stereotype paints writers and readers as introverts, rather than extroverts who can get their fix of communication through non-literary means. This effect seems to have an especially important role for depressed individual. It’s an unfortunate fact that people often move away from those with depression when the individual needs help most, partly because the condition has the effect of slowing and flattening emotive behaviour, thus robbing the individual of the ability to rally their social network. This often has the unpleasant affect of leaving the individual feeling even more dejected and can lead into a viscous cycle.

As someone who spent most of their teenage years depressed, I speak from experience. For a long time I simply didn’t know how to talk to people, let alone express my inner turmoil in a way that made them care, and my fumbling pleas only seemed to mark me as more of an outcast. Those days are consigned to the past, but it’s little wonder that writing became so important to me because it was my only medium for reaching out to the world. When I wrote effectively I made my pain the reader’s and whilst people shirk from the suffering of others, they’re own is of the uttermost concern. It should therefore come as no surprise that there are much higher incidences of unipolar depression to be found in writers than the general population. Flaherty puts the increase at eight to ten percent, with similar figures for bipolar depression (though apparently poets are forty percent more likely to be bipolar!) And I suspect the only reason that that number isn’t much higher is that severe depression robs the individual of the energy to sit down and complete a piece of publishable length.

Of course, it would be a fair accusation to say that I’m being over reductionist in this post. I don’t deny that there are innumerable other reasons for writing and I’ve only ignored them because a blog post couldn’t do them justice. Yet, putting this issue aside, whoever you ask, self-expression normally always counted as one of the most important reasons for creating art. This, I believe, is largely because it taps into the human need for communication and expression of personal suffering. For writing is one of the greatest acts of social empathy there is.

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February 23, 2012

Where to find me at the 2012 Bath Lit Fest

Just a quick post to advertise two events I’m involved with at the 2012 Bath Lit Fest.

On March 2nd I will be creatively pitching my work to a panel of judges at the Pitch Perfect Event. I’ve already seen the fab performances of a couple of my friends and can reveal that it promises to be a really fun night.

Then on March 6th I’m running a Speculative fiction workshop with three friends from the Bath Spa Ma – Rosie Oliver is our Hard Sci-fi expert, Sophie McGovern will be handling Fantasy and Magical Realism, Phoebe Wood-wheelhouse is in charge all things horror, and I’ll be covering a bit of everything. The event is very informal and will be geared towards whatever people want on the day, so if you have any writing problems you need help with or just want some inspiration then pop along.

Both events are free to attend so if you’re around why not come say hi!

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February 20, 2012

The Dyslexic Writer

Hans Christian Andersen was one, as was Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald was another, so was Edgar Allen Poe and we mustn’t forget William Butler Yeats. As you should have guessed from the title, I am, of course, talking about dyslexics, but I equally could have equally been making a list of successful and lauded writers. Why then is the popular conception that individuals with dyslexia are ‘people what can’t write or read no good’? Though this can be true, it’s a gross over simplification, and as a dyslexic who hopes to make a career out of journalism and writing books I thought that I would spend today’s post explaining why being dyslexic doesn’t have to entail a full stop for my dreams.

1. Being dyslexic doesn’t necessarily mean severe difficulties in reading and writing

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability, this means that it is condition in which there is a significant contrast between an individual’s skill at a particular task and their overall intelligence. Psychologists have found that people tend to preform with roughly equally ability on all cognitive abilities, so a person who is average at verbal reasoning would be expected to also be average at spelling. In the case of dyslexia however, writing and/or reading will be worse than expected when compared to the individual’s general ability. In other words, an individual need not actually be much below average at spelling and reading to qualify, just a lot brighter at other tasks. For instance, my spelling is only just below average, around the 45th percentile, but in strong contrast to my general intellectual ability, 75th to 99.6th percentile for reasoning and comprehension tasks, and 50th to 60th percentile for tasks that require fine motor control and digit span. Meanwhile, my reading out loud skills are above average for familiar words but below average for unfamiliar ones.

It’s often the case that people with dyslexia function perfectly well at reading and writing but are slightly slower because they have adapted to using unusual and slightly less-efficient strategies. For example, I read words visually as shown by the difference in my ability to read familiar and unfamiliar words. I also have poor phonological awareness, meaning that I’m not good at distinguishing similar speech units. This is one of the reasons why I’m a huge malapropist – one of my most special moments was a hot summer evening a couple of years back when I ran inside after being bitten by gnats and midges and screamed that I was being ‘attacked by gannets and midgets’.

A literalization of my malapropism. Apologises for the poor colouring, the procrastination potential on this one turned out to be rather too good!

Dyslexia, therefore, points to a contrast between overall ability and difficulties with a cluster of faculties such as fine auditory processing, working memory, quick visual processing and motor control. Popular theory suggests this is the result of minor disorganization of the cerebellum (the part of the brain commonly associated with movement plans and coordination, hence why dyslexics often have difficulties with fine motor control.)

2. The ability to write creatively has nothing to do with good grammar or spelling

In the last section I argued that being dyslexic doesn’t always mean the individual cannot spell, yet even people who are terrible at spelling and grammar can still be excellent writers, as these skills are by no means the most important aspects of the craft. Defining the which skills are, is by no means a black and white issue, but they almost definitely have more to do with talents such as: clarity of expression, vocabulary, good structure, awareness of audience, and entertaining phraseology; and for fiction writing, creativity, imagination, original and striking language use, consistent POV, and pace, to name but a few. *None* of these abilities should be catastrophically limited by dyslexia. Yes, a certain level of English ability is required to write clearly, but with the proof checking tools on modern word processors an infallible grasp of spelling isn’t a prerequisite (note: as an example that was corrected from ‘prerequist’). OK, as someone who reads visually I occasionally select the wrong option (on more than one occasion I’ve replied to invites, declaring that I will ‘defiantly’ go to people’s parties) but I’ve got to keep editors on their toes haven’t I?

3. Could a degree of dyslexia actually be beneficial to writing creatively?

I framed this point as a question as it’s more personal speculation than fact. Though I have no substantial evidence, I suspect that a loosening of the strict rules of language actually encourages playfulness that can result in a form creativity that would be stifled by an over-occupation with whether a sentence is ‘right’ or not. For instance, my current novel relies heavily on altered forms of consciousness including the POVs of animal-human hybrid minds and a character who becomes very mentally unstable. To use language in a conventional way in these cases simply wouldn’t sound believable, so I’m having to experiment and break more than a few rules along the way. As someone who’s never quite seen eye to eye with grammar this is more of a delight than a chore and I’ve been having great fun brutally murdering the fair English tongue. Nouns are becoming verbs, verbs nouns, fullstops have gone AWOL and these guys ‘-‘ have invaded my prose like ants at a picnic (at least they’re company for the ellipses, look, there’s one drowning in your orange juice.)

The problem with people who take grammar too seriously is that it’s easy to get overly anal. Please don’t take this in the wrong away, I’m actually extremely grateful for the existence of grammar Nazis, as if the world were full of people like me I’m sure that meaningful language would have long since degraded into a series of emotive squeaks. Like any ‘rebel’ my identity is reliant on people to uphold the rules in order that I can break them. However, excessive enforcement often results in stagnation, whereas creativity relies heavily on the quality of novelty.  As this blog is becoming my platform to spill out wild theories, I postulate that grammar Nazis and individuals with a loose but creative grasp of the rules are like a pair of antagonist muscles, vital for the smooth working and invigoration of language. The latter introduces the spark of entropy that drives it forwards, whilst the former polices the status quo to the extent that the whole structure doesn’t collapse into meaninglessness. The latter results in the novelty of creativity, the former maintains the necessary constraints within which something creative can be said to have value.

In the course of all this rambling I hope that I’ve at least shown that being dyslexic doesn’t destine an writer’s prose to the waste paper basket, and that it it might even count as an odd sort of strength. As Einstein, another famous dyslexic, said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

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February 16, 2012

A change of heart

I had intended for my next post to be on the theme of writer’s block, but in a twist of appropriate irony I’ve been struggling to write it. So for the mean time, I thought I’d write a follow up to my post on book art.

I made a number of claims in this post, most of which I stick by; however I have since had a change of heart on one point. Yes, people over invest in books as a category, and yes two exact copies are interchangable but I was completely wrong to claim that the substance of the book is irrelevant. (That argument was a particularly ironic considering I’m writing a whole novel to tackle Cartesian Dualism. Yeah, ouch.)

After all, the word ‘substance’ is often used in a way that means ‘significant’ or ‘important’. Of course, the physical component of a story has a role to play because reading is a physical act (as every human act ultimately is.) Though I personally enjoy stories just as much on a kindle or a laptop* as in a paper copy, for many people the small sensory and tactile qualities of a book add to the reading experience, even though these elements have no direct relation to the story itself. These might be the smell of new pages, the texture of paper between fingertips, the movement that is required to turn a page. If there are lots of a particular book it is still rather silly to denounce using a couple in a piece of art as a crime, but that’s different from my erroneous claim that the substance of a book doesn’t matter. Where it becomes a real shame to cut up a book is when it is a unique item, as with very old texts, or those that have personal value. These are important because the book is not just the medium for a story, but has a history – story – as an object in itself.

On a more general philosophical track, I regret the subtext behind the claim because I believe that discourse only ever has power because of its impact on bodies. (I know, I know, but if I can’t make hideously bold and lazily supported statements on my own blog then where can I?) Of course, working from my anti-Cartesian metaphysical foundations it would be impossible for there to be information without some physical, or energy, based component, but what I am trying to say  here is that it’s impossible to fully dissociate information from the medium through which it is expressed. Even more broadly, a system of meaning can’t be dissociated from the embodiment of the consciousness interpreting it. The physical makes discourse meaningful, and discourse defines the parameters of objects. Discourse is the skin of the world, if you like.**

I’ve spent the majority of this post rattling off a list of philosophical reasons for the change in my stance, but what really got me to rethink the issue was reading some of my Mum’s old letters. It’s almost been a year now since my Mum died; though in sense a she’d been dying, neuron by neuron, for 15 years as MS savaged her body and mind. I was eight when she was diagnosed, and for as long as I remember there’s only been a void where there should be memories of who she was before the illness. Obviously it’s been rather strange spending over half my life missing someone I can’t even remember, so I’ve always been desperate to try and recover something of the person she was before the disease. I was therefore very excited today when my aunt gave me a packet of letters that my Mum had written to her during her time at university. Though I was most interested in their content, I am finding what really sets my eyes watering is their substance. Rooting through the cards, loose bits of paper and notes scribbled on the back of receipts, is like having my own treasure chest; and I only have to see her distinctive scrawl to feel the sadness unfurl inside me. As through writing on these scraps of paper she poured a tiny part of her self into them, and so they preserved her, like an insect in amber. I can hold these pieces of paper and know that the person I miss more than anyone else in the world once held them. Of course, it’s a miserable substitute for my Mum as she was living, her consciousness itself is evaporated into the flesh of the universe; and yet these traces are

still part of who she was, they are artifacts of the person I lost. So just as a palaeontologist studies fossils because that’s as close as they can get to the real thing, through letters like these I can slowly reassemble an idea of what my Mum was like. Yes, the informational content itself is the most important part, but the flavour of it is taken entirely from the physicality of the letters.

So I take it all back. Substance does have substance. And as society accelerates towards hyper-reality it’s going to be interesting to see what impact it has on human understanding. Either way I intend to start writing letters again, if just in case I one day have a daughter who finds herself in a similar situation.

*Though of course electronic reading devices have their own sensory and tactile qualities too.

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January 20, 2012

The Holistic Author

Today I want to talk about Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the main thrust of the talk is a discussion of how, in cultures like ancient Greece, creativity was seen as arising from a spiritual dimension (for instance Socrates believed that his ideas were given him by a daemon) and that this form of thinking was far more healthy for the author’s ego (when work is lauded) and well-being (when work comes into trouble). For those of you who have watched the video, then perhaps the first thing that I should say is that I don’t entirely agree with it – her impassioned plea to think about creativity in this way despite the improbability of the metaphysical foundations is a rather feeble conclusion. However I do believe it raises some very interesting issues.

What struck me most about Gilbert’s talk, is her discussion of how the importance the Renaissance placed on the individual has affected our ideas and responses to creativity. Following on from the ideas of the Renaissance, modern Western ideas of the self tend to conceptualise the individual as something entirely autonomous and divided from the world around him or her. (An idea which perhaps has its strongest roots in Descartes’ claim that the mind is something that is indivisible, eternal, and an entirely discrete substance from matter). Within this paradigm it is easy to think of creativity as something eminently mysterious, as pure inspiration which the author plucks from the ether, or rather from nowhere at all. I often get the feeling that this kind of belief is implicitly behind the question ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ that authors always seem to be asked (normally with a tone of reverence that suggests the author is doing nothing less than magic). The truth, however, is that ideas come from the rest of life. They often appear to come from nowhere, or as if a daemon were whispering them in the writer’s ear, but only because the processes are (normally) subconscious ones. The question only seems pertinent because the western conception of the self is wrong. Yes, I am individual, but I am also part of a larger whole – a person is but a node in the network of their society and environment, and by extension the entire universe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say anything New Age or remotely spiritual here, merely point out how the existence of an individual is entirely reliant on a leakage to and from their surrounding through consumption and excretion (in both the literal and more profound sense), an interplay that ultimately defines the individual. A person then is a relationship between body, brain, and environment; and creativity is but one form of response in the exchange. To refer to a Humeian philosophy, the mind cannot create something entirely new, only mix up the ‘impressions’ gleamed from the senses. A story then is what the subconscious spits out from the stew of sensations and concepts it’s fed, (probably) in an attempt to understand these inputs.

Of course, this still leaves  the writer as the main source of responsibility and ownership over their work and yet it does somewhat dilute the excessive sovereignty that western conceptions of the self enforce upon the author. It is, in a sense, a holistic view of creativity. For example, it eases my frustration at my current writer’s block to accept that the problem lies not just within myself, but the entire emotional state of my life at present, and hence in an rather indirect way, the state of my social network, where I’m living, even the economy! Meanwhile, I mustn’t forget my writing group, which though (unfortunately!) doesn’t write my novel for me has become such an integral part of my writing process that it’s hard to fully separate my identity as a writer from it. My novel is mine, it’s written only by me, and yet there it’s inspired and constructed from an innumerable mass of ideas, people and events.

Another way of looking at this idea could be to liken the author to a cook. The baker-writer creates the story out of  the ingredients given her. It’s her hands that stir them all together and thus it’s success does depends to a large extent on her skill and commitment, however her recipe will be inspired by those learnt from previous bakers, and if there’s no good butter to be had, or the shape of the tin is wrong, or the oven always burns things, then these will all impact on how the cake turns out.

So, despite dodgy metaphysical pleads, Gilbert is certainly onto something and it’s time we recognised that the writer exists as part of a system – the holistic author.

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January 9, 2012

Book art and idolatry of the ‘living’ novel

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I love book art. There’s something magical in how these artists have pulled new meaning and narrative from old unwanted books. Consider the marvellously cutting (no pun intended) message in Robert The’s (The being his surname) Bible gun and how Alexander Korzer Robinson’s  gothic bestiary texy exists as both a literal dissection and a metaphorical one which reveals and transforms the nature of the book.

Yet it’s the curious negative reactions that these pieces can provoke that I mainly want to discuss in today’s post. Such responses are often along the lines of the following “I find this rather repulsive”, “This makes me physically ill”, “I am a big fan of old books, and seeing them defiled makes my skin crawl”, “To all of you hack artists who partake in this kind of literary destruction, try writing a book. Then maybe you will have more respect for them… “ These are by no means the exception, the above examples I took from just one blog post and were made by seemingly otherwise intelligent, polite individuals. I have even known mild mannered friends and family inspired to such disgust that they throw out phrases such as ‘the artist should be shot’, almost as if the creator were responsible for murder or rape, not cutting up a book.

Whilst there are books within my collection that I am extremely fond of, I completely fail to understand the depth of disapproval that these pieces can provoke. The (next to non-existent) Protestant within me wants to accuse these people of Idolatry. After all, I have never observed a similar reaction to art which recycles gadgets, even though the average modern western individual is likely to invest far more time, money, self-worth and identity with an iphone or laptop than a novel. Why then do people get so riled over a recycled book? After all, if these texts hadn’t been turned into art, their fate would have been the rubbish dump, recycling centre, or a shelf in a charity shop. (Though I entirely support passing books on to be enjoyed by new owners through shops like Oxfam, it’s important to note that these organizations themselves bin a fair few of the books they are donated, simply because the covers or spines are too damaged to put them up for resale.) So as far as book heavens go, being turned into art is one of the best.

Of course, there is a certain sensitivity around ‘defacing’ books as the act is often associated with censorship. Yet it’s hard to claim that this is what is happening in these pieces considering that only one of very many copies of a book is being altered in each case.

No, the impression I get is that the negative responses are entirely emotional with no rational foundation, and the only way I can think of to explain this is that these people believe on a implicit level that books have some form of beinghood – that texts hold stories in the same way that a body contains/is life. After all, many a lonely child’s favourite friends have been novels and to be enthralled by a well written book is to experience something that feels entirely vivid, real and tangible. It’s no coicindence therefore that literary theory has long drawn links between books and bodies, consider for instance, how critics refer to an author’s ‘corpus’, or, even more directly, their ‘body of work’. In the literary crime genre there’s a fair number of novels written with the purpose of comparing the dissection of bodies with anaylisis of texts. In other literature meanwhile, it’s not uncommon for metaphors to be made between skin and pages, ink and blood, flesh and paper.

To extrapolate even further, I would agrue that books are a good allegory for personhood. For, unless one wants to take a dualistic view of the self, it’s arguable that a person is composed of some form of interaction between three elements, these being body, self narrative (this being autobiographical memory and the sense of history through which identity is constructed and comprehended, and future direction made), and finally a consciousness to bring these elements into life. Reading, I believe, works on a comparative structure – there is the physical substance (whether it be paper or a kindle) the narrative, and lastly an act of consciousness by the reader which brings the story to life. For the purposes of today’s post it is important to note that this experience is not the quality of the book, but a *relationship* between words and a reader. If an author were Frankenstein creating his monster, then it is the consciousness of the reader that is the electricity – and as soon as the reader stops thinking of the monster, life leaves it. This is why books often feel altered, or provoke a different response, on rereading, because the person (not the book) has changed. A text therefore contains the potential for the experience of a story, but it is the reader that animates it. The consciousness of the reader is therefore a vital element of the equation, as is the narrative, but the substance (the physical book) is interchangeable with any other copy of the same story.

So whilst I entirely sympathise with the attachment a reader can grow towards a particular physical text, I fail to see why giving old books new life through art can be considered a crime.

* I, of course, admit that I might be entirely off the mark here, if you’re repulsed by book art and have a concrete rationale for feeling this way then please comment, I’d be very interested to hear your reasoning!*

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January 3, 2012

In Soviet Russia book writes you

(Note: for those confused by the title, today’s post actually has nothing to do with Russia, it’s just a geeky reference to this meme)

Today’s post, dear readers, is cautionary tale of great woe.

To explain my predicament we must travel back, back through the mists of time and space to three months ago, here, in Somerset. Back then I was a young foolish pipsqueak full of ridiculous ideals like hope, optimism, even happiness. I’d just finished my Creative Writing MA and was full of enthusiasm to finish my novel. To do this, I thought that the best plan of action would be to put my life on hold and move back in with my dad to get some serious writing done (this wasn’t the only reason, but it was the main one). When the book was finished, I thought, I would return to Bath, get a job and continue with normal life. After all I’m an over-educated and under-experienced graduate, trying to find her first job in a difficult economic climate – it seemed sensible for me to finish the book first then, with it out of the way, throw myself full-heartedly into a career. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about losing track of my dreams of becoming an author in the turmoil of the urban rat race.

The plan was perfectly rational, save for one small over-sight – the unfortunate fact that writing doesn’t respond to reason.

To fully understand what happened, let’s look at where I expected to be today, January 2012, back in October. As the title of today’s post has already condemned it to geekdom, I will provide illuminating re-enactments via the medium of rage comics (again, if you don’t know your memes, enlightenment to be found here.)

Expectations

 Let’s take some time to analyse this vision. First, there is the breath-taking, eye-ball searing, heart rendering completed book – note how it is an object of such beauty that it can somehow levitate. Next admire the pretty rainbows of happiness and joy stuff. Lastly, marvel at the agents and publishers in the bottom left corner, swooning and tearing off their shirts to reveal manly chests out of enthusiasm for said book.

Now, let’s take a look at where I actually am.

Reality

The more perceptive amongst you will have noticed a number of differences between the two. Let me list them for you:

  1. No book.
  2. Lots of raving, quite probably insane.
  3. No worshipping publishers. Subject is a half-maddened, hermited loser.

Like all good cautionary tales there is a clear moral to this story – books are written to their own deadlines. You can’t force them to your plans because stories aren’t made but grown. Just like gardening, they won’t respond to your demands to bloom early. What a good author does is create space for a novel to do its thing – weeding out the irrelevant plants and giving the growing bud plenty of water, manure and sun.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been a very good gardener. When I was ten I entered a daffodil competition but I was so lacking in patience that I would check the bulbs very ten minutes, which involved opening the dark warm cupboard they were stored and exposing them to too much light. As a result the daffodils grew into stunted, sickly flowers.

Gardens, here, are of course a rather crude allegory for the subconscious mind, and just as I did with the daffodils all those years ago, I’ve been putting my book under too much strain to deliver. Writing gets its vitality and energy from the rest of life and, by putting everything else on hold, I’ve only been smothering my novel.

So, ladies and gentlemen, my New Year’s Resolution is simple – to start leading my life fully. The book is still the most important thing, but now is the time to start focusing on other goals whilst the garden grows. I’m going to move back to Bath/Bristol, throw myself into the world of internships and jobs and make lots of time to socialize.

Books decide when and how they will be written, and it’s time for me to respect that. So whilst the novel will take a little while longer yet, it’ll be infinitely better for it.

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December 28, 2011

My Other Half is a Manuscript

Honey, we need to talk.

No, put down that sub-clause, it can wait. We need to talk, we need to talk about us.

Look- it’s- I didn’t want you to find out like this, but there’s another book. It’s a fantasy, not that that makes things any better, and well, we’re at the 2,000 word stage. What can I say?! It just happened. I didn’t mean it to, but it did.

Look-!

Honey-!

Please!

Please don’t be like that. I still love you, that’s why I’m telling you this, because we have to be honest with each other

Did I tell you? I spent all Christmas bemoaning the fact that we had to be apart. Every waking moment with my family I really wanted to be with you. But then when I finally got to return I didn’t know what to say, I saw all your gaps and flaws and how far there was still to go and it tore me up inside. So I went to get a drink, and next thing I knew I was writing in bed with this sexy intellectual fantasy, knocking out 2000 words with barely a blink. I’m ashamed to admit it was just so easy and thrilling and fun that for a spilt second I found myself thinking that maybe we should start we see other literature. It’s not the answer though. We’ve really got something going here, baby, and we can’t throw all that away.

Things are getting so intense between us I just had to blow off steam. Day after day after day of writing, it was doing my head in. So I started to stray. I didn’t mean it to happen, not yet. At first it was fantasising about the other book in the bath, then scribbling a couple of lines after work, only harmless flirting. But then, when, I found myself late at night steaming ahead on its first chapter I knew that if we’re going to make this work something has to change.

Yes, I know comparing writing to relationships is a bit of a clique, but only because it’s so true.

See, there’s the excitement stage. Do you remember? That balmy Septemeber, we’d only just met and we were trying out new writing styles and ideas and it felt like the whole world was at our fingertips. We were doing 5000 words a day. I thought that together we could write anything.

Then, somewhere down the line things changed.  We kept starting over, your plot didn’t work, or your characters, how many goddamn first chapters did you make me write? I started to hate you. I hated the fact that you stopped me spending time with my other hobbies, the way you made everything so difficult. I hated how much power you had over me. Sometimes I got so tired and down that whenever I looked back at how far we’d come together all I could see was your faults, and how you’ll never compare to the perfection I hope for in my head. Sometimes we get that old spark, and things are like they were if just for an hour or two, but mostly it’s a slog. And it drives me crazy.

Please don’t cry-

I’m not saying it’s over, but we’re having to put in serious effort to hold this all together. We have to do something to recreate the spice in our writing life.

I think something that non-writers often  don’t understand is that the interaction between an author and their book is a proper relationship, not a simple out-pouring, because you’re something with its own being – a separate entity that stands apart, with your own pulls and moods and sense of direction that I have to learn to work with. Even more so than a painting or piece of music because you take so long to create, not to mention large, I could never hold all of you in my head. And yet like a real relationship, you have come to define me. So much of my time, thoughts, self-worth and hopes are bound up with you, how could you not be a vital part of who I currently am?

See, this is what I’m trying to say – you’re important to me. I love you. Back at the beginning our relationship was exciting but it wasn’t deep. Now, when I’m with other people, often I’m not really there, but with you in my head. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because all I can think of is you, how I could make you better, the future we might have. Because I still love you book, I hate you because I can’t stand how much you mean to me.

This can’t be forever. There’s no denying that. But I want you to know, whatever happens, you’ll always be my first, and firsts are hard to forget.

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