Do writers need boundaries?

Vive la difference!

I'm at a really interesting point in the novel I'm writing. And I know that because it's making me uncomfortable. It's not violence or sex or swearing; no, it's more subtle than that. It's about religion and culture. More specifically, religion and culture that aren't mine. 

I've recently had some brilliant email conversations with Lynn Michell, founder of Linen Press, and it's been fascinating to see where our thinking aligns and where it diverges, when it comes to books. We've chatted about the tropes in genre fiction and how, for example, some of the archetypal characters in noir don't play so well out of context, or in a more modern one. It all got me thinking about the boundaries writers place upon themselves and how that can either be a blessing or a curse.

Sometimes when you create a character with a walk on role there is something about them that makes you want to spend more time with them. In Line of Sight that spotlight fell on Thurston Leon, a West Indian private detective based in Dalston. Then (same book) there's Stuart Fraser, the Scottish bloke working for Special Branch over in Belfast. And let's not forget the two cops from Shadow State, Karen Edwards and Jun Wen - a black Brummie and a British Born Chinese detective. You see where I'm going with this now?

The BBC website ran a piece recently about how prolific author and TV writer, Anthony Horowittz, was cautioned to not create a black lead character because he is white. I don't anticipate having a profile that high any time soon so it's a moot point for me, but one that I have considered anyway. Sometimes ethnicity, religion and culture are entirely secondary to a character because they either aren't relevant to the story (and let's face it, I'm talking about my stories here), and sometimes there isn't space for that secondary character to get more than her five minutes on the page. And sometimes, for a whole heap of reasons, I don't feel I have the skill to do it well enough.

But when a fear of being labelled patronising or concerns of allegations of tokenism prevent literature (or any aspect of the arts) being diverse and, well...imaginative...I think we have a problem.

My fifth book in the Thomas Bladen Spy Chaser series stumbles into that maze because it takes place during the 2005 London Bombings. There are a few changes to the team and an assignment that forces people to confront their values and prejudices. 

As writers we're so used to Mark Twain's 'write what you know' advice. (Or Hemingway's, if you prefer.) And you've probably heard my own updated version, which is 'know what you're writing about'. When it comes to diversity and inclusivity, I think it's more important to just get out of the village of our own experience. We need to be able to write about people we don't know, so that some of our readers can meet new people too. And not merely perfect, politically correct and sanitised stereotypes, but real, flawed and surprising people. 

Anyone who has read the series so far will know that I like to bring characters back from other books - Jack Langton, Sheryl, Sir Peter, and even Bob Peterson (I have a soft spot for Uncle Bob!). This time, MI5 operative Rupee Tagore also returns to Thomas and Karl's world. She was always there, on the floor below.

Writers need boundaries to see how far we've come and then how far we're willing or able to go. Beyond that, we're into the wastelands of taste and the quicksand of appropriateness.

It's a sad fact of our interconnected world that whatever you write, pretty much, someone will take issue or offence with. That's lesson one from social media! I believe, as writers, we have to be true to the muse and to how faithfully we can express our imagination on the page. It's a process, a continual momentum against that formless boundary made up of our own preconceptions and society's mores. When we lose that momentum we become static, trapped in the confines of our own experience, culture and identity. It's not that we have to continually push and risk offending or challenging; it's that we need to feel free to explore the other when the muse takes us. 

My books live here!

Guest spot - Lynn Michell

I first heard about Lynn Michell and Linen Press when artist, writer and friend Susie Nott-Bower's debut novel, The Making of Her, was published in 2012. Lynn and I recently found ourselves part of the same virtual conversation and, happily, she accepted my offer to write a personal post about the world of publishing from an independent perspective. I think this thoughtful piece adds to the great publishing debate and I invite you to both add your opinion in a comment and to check out the Linen Press, whether you're a writer or a reader. 

Am I selling books or cornflakes? Lynn Michell

As the director of Linen Press I’ve seen the book trade change over the last ten years from an open space for experienced, emergent and experimental writers to a closed shop in which only the famous, the celebs, the major award winners and writers with a golden gift for self-marketing can be confident of ending up on the shelves of Waterstones, W H Smith and Tesco.

The language of publishing reflects those changes. I’m hearing online presence, marketing, niche, social media platforms and branding. Reporting from a recent writers’ conference in Brighton, Sally-Shakti Willow of the Contemporary Small Press writes: ‘branding’ was definitely the buzzword of the day with every speaker stressing ‘the importance of marketing yourself like a packet of cornflakes.’ Writers were told ‘your novel is a piece of fruit’ so make sure publishers know to place you with bananas or kiwis.’ Sally concluded: ’what I saw through that shop-window was not bananas or kumquats or cornflakes but something rotten, and potentially toxic.’ (https://thecontemporarysmallpress.com/2016/03/15/small-presses-worth-much-more-than-money/).

So authors need to market themselves like cornflakes. They must build websites, set up Twitter accounts, give talks in libraries to three people sheltering from the rain, and push a copy of their book into the few remaining indie book shops. I hate to force this on Linen Press authors, not because for many it goes against the grain to chase the limelight but because I’m not convinced that their efforts will bring them recognition or sales. All the evidence from six years of Linen Press’s strong social media presence suggests that there is no correlation between activity on our social media sites and sales. Here’s the reality check. UK publishers released 184,000 titles in 2013. Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown described the figure as “either a sign of cultural vitality or publishing suicide. Of course, it is utter madness to publish so many books when the average person reads between one and five books a year.’ Jamie Byng at Canongate agreed: ‘I think we publish too many books, Canongate included, and I think this impacts negatively on how well we publish books as an industry. It is very easy to acquire a book. Much harder to publish it successfully. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/22/uk-publishes-more-books-per-capita-million-report). So it’s from inside this avalanche of yearly publications that an author must carve out a niche for herself. How many niches remain?

And published authors have to shout over the sales pitches from the self-published book mountain. It’s hard to find recent, accurate figures but between 2014 and 2015 self-published titles rose from 16% to 22% of the digital market. http://www.thebookseller.com/news/self-published-titles-22-e-book-market-325152 

In 2009, 76% of all books released were self-published although the average financial return was only £500. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing). As Derek Thompson says in an email to me: ‘Much as self-publishing has democratised the route to seeing work in print, it has opened the flood gates without a quality filter.’

It may be that the sheer volume of published and self-published books sends readers to the security of the Top Ten in Waterstones and the other chains. They can sit on public transport reading the same novel as the person next to them. Call it Girl on a Train syndrome.

My authors ask why their books aren’t in Waterstones. The Big Five can throw £100,000 of marketing budget at a few chosen titles leaving the rest to fall by the wayside. Waterstones takes a minimum of 60% of the RRP which makes it prohibitive for small presses who work with costly small runs. We’d be paying Waterstones to sell our books.

As a small indie publisher, it’s a growing challenge to sell the books on our list. Ten years ago Childhood’s Hill by Marjorie Wilson, Linen Press’s first publication, was accepted by Blackwells in Edinburgh and sold so well that for one week it beat Ian Rankin in their Top Ten. Later books also managed a toe in the door because managers, not central sales offices, still decided whether or not to take a risk on a book. 

Jump to 2016. Sometimes A River Song, one of the best books on our list, received a dozen rave reviews and its Costa prize-winning author, Avril Joy, attended three book fairs shortly after the launch, yet still we struggle to sell copies and Waterstones won’t look at it. I sense a further seismic shift towards a limited diet of mainstream-published crowd pleasers.

The three routes to publishing have split and gone their separate ways. Think cornflakes, brand yourself, find a vacant niche and you may hook a mainstream publisher. Go down the self-publishing route if you know how to stand head and shoulders above the self-marketing crowd. Or go with an indie press which occupies the space between the other two. This year three out of six books on the Booker short list come from indies, one a tiny Scottish press. Success is possible. And, as Sally-Shakti Willow says, even without the rainbow end of best seller status, small presses are ‘committed to freedom of expression, artistic risk, literary innovation, and championing new and exciting writers.’

Excuse this final bit of branding. Linen Press, the only indie women’s press in the UK, does read unsolicited manuscripts and we are looking for beautifully written books. Send us your manuscript. www.linen-press.com

Guest Spot - Susie Nott-Bower - The Making of Her

It's a rare thing indeed to witness the journey of a writer, from a newbie finding their feet to a fully fledged author in the eyes of the world. I met Susie at a Novel Writing Summer School in Falmouth, back in 2006. We worked together in a few exercises, under the guiding hand of tutor Jane Pollard. Over the course of a week we all whipped our ideas into some sort of shape and experienced the familiar flow of elation and deflation that happens when a course of this kind...well, runs its course...and ends.

I can't remember who suggested it (probably Susie), but not long afterwards a few of us decided to meet up at regular intervals - every two or three months - to give a shape to the solitary business of writing and of editing (a joy we had yet to encounter). As our respective novels developed we offered support, commiseration, objective feedback and a sense of shared experience, as we moved forward from the exaltation of the completed first draft to the trench warfare that is editing.

It's a particular pleasure to see a friend achieve one of their goals. Friday, April 27th, The Making of Her is published. Here's to you Susie, you've climbed the peak and can now take a breather!  

Naturally, I couldn't resist the opportunity to put her on the spot and find out what the view is like from there, whether her feet have blisters, and her highs and lows of the journey so far.

But first, here's a summary of The Making of Her, in Susie's own words:

Set in the pressure-cooker world of television, The Making of Her is a blackly funny retort to a society which values youth over age and appearance over experience. 

     The Making of Her is the makeover programme that Clara never wanted to produce, featuring the one person she never would have chosen.  Add to the mix an errant husband, a barefoot counsellor and a reclusive rock star, and change is inevitable.  But does transformation come from the inside out, or from the outside in? 

     And will The Making of Her prove to be the making of them all?

(Cue sound of spotlight being clicked on...)

 1. What, if anything, has changed in your writing from the way you wrote at the summer school to the published version?

I think the main difference is that I’ve learned not to be afraid of discarding and rewriting.  I was terribly precious about writing before I began this novel (and throughout much of the writing of it).  It was very late on before I dared to really make the necessary changes - dared to ‘let go’.  I have also learned to lighten up – the original version was called ‘The Change’ (I know, I know) and full of gloom, doom and menopausal mentions. 

   

 2. What are your views on opportunities that are specifically for women, such as Mslexia, The Orange Fiction prize and Linen Press Publishing?  Are they a niche, a response to an industry deficiency or purely a matter of choice for the organisations involved?

I’d say, a matter of choice for the organisations involved.  I guess you could also see them in terms of a ‘brand’, which sits easier with me.  Linen Press is a publishing house which brands itself as ‘great writing for women - by women’.  This allows our readership – mainly women – to find and recognise us, just as The Women’s Press or Virago did before us.

 3. What inspired / drove you to write about the themes in your book?

I’ve always been fascinated by transformation since devouring C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories as a child, together with The Brothers Grimm.  Fairy tales always feature an element of transformation – Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid – and it seems as if this longing for personal transformation has developed, over the centuries, through various incarnations – alchemy, psychoanalysis, personal development and finally, in today’s youth-obsessed culture, cosmetic surgery.  It could be argued that changing your outer appearance is more a matter of changing gold into lead – but I was interested as to whether changing the outside could actually bring about inner transformation.  In The Making of Her, one woman opts for surgery whilst the other enters therapy.  And both are transformed, in very different ways. 

 4. Do you see yourself differently, as a writer, now that you have made the journey from first draft to book launch date? And how might this influence your future writing?

I feel validated, after years of rejection.  Not particularly estimable, but when people ask what I do, it’s a great relief to be able to answer that I’m a writer, without dreading the inevitable next question:  So do you have a book published?

But my confidence as a writer has both grown and diminished – because I have no idea whether the next one will be publishable, or even writeable.  And because I’ve opened the Pandora’s Box of publishing, I can never again approach my writing in the same innocent and exuberant way that I did.  Although - as in the story of Pandora’s Box - in spite of all the terrors, Hope endures.

 5. Was it difficult to say goodbye to your characters?

Yes and no.  No, because they each found resolution and redemption, so their stories – at least for now – are complete.  Yes, because I grew very, very attached to them.

 6. What would you have liked to have been asked?

How did you come to be published by Linen Press?  And my answer - apart from writing the novel - would be: because Derek not only sent me Linen Press’s details, but reminded me – as I despaired after a hard rejection from an agent – that everything turns on a sixpence.  The day after Linen Press replied, a real sixpence arrived in the post from Derek.*

 7. What would you have not liked to have been asked?

How many hours a day do you spend writing?  The reluctant answer would be – none.  My hours are spent marketing and tweeting.  This must change soon!

The Making of Her is available from Linen Press - www.linenpressbooks.com

An ebook version will be available in due course.

Susie Nott-Bower, who neglected to mention that she's a BAFTA winner, is available for talks in the Bristol area. She is currently working on a new novel called Reborn, which is about painting, magic and rebirth.

* Sometimes we're metaphorical signposts for one another, whispers of possibilities unseen but almost within reach. Other times, if we're really lucky, we can be the actual link in the chain for someone else to reach their dream.