Blogs: Damien Walter
The End of the Print Age?
Posted on 26th February 2010 at 13:40
In anticipation of our keynote speech ‘The End of the Print Age?‘ to be given by award winning novelist Graham Joyce at the Writing Industries Conference 2010 (6th March, Loughborough University), we take a look at some of the changes ushering in the new digital age in publishing.
- Apple launch the iPad in late March and will provide an ebook store with content from most major publishers. Will iBooks do for books what iTunes has done for music?
- Amazon, the worlds biggest book retailer and makers of the successful Kindle e-reader, announce 70% royalties for authors selling their books directly through the Kindle store. With most publishers paying royalties of 10%, what effect will this have on the industry?
- The Eurpoean Union launch a continent wide online library. Will Europeana replace the humble public lending library?
- Sony Ericson predict there will be 50 billion mobile phones in the world by 2020. With many of these having high resolution colour screens, will mobile phones be the reading device of the future?
- Head of Penguin books says he is not scared of the transition from print to ebooks.
But despite these changes, the paperback book is still loved by millions of readers around the world. Is this the end of the print age? If so how will publishers and writers adapt to changing times and make the most of the opportunities that come with the digital age? Let us know your thoughts, and don’t miss Graham Joyce at the Writing Industries Conference.
By the way…your laptop is your wife.
Posted on 26th February 2010 at 11:20
James K. Walker, editor for Left Lion at speaker at the upcoming Writing Industries Conference shares his Top Ten Tips for writers.
In Saturday’s Guardian Review they published the ten rules of writing of which my favourite came courtesy of Phillip Pullman: ‘My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work’. As is often the case with good advice, I’ve decided to completely ignore it and compile my own list.
- Read your work out in public. You’ll develop a new found appreciation of tone, rhythm and punctuation. See the reaction of the audience as a kind of verbal editing. When they don’t laugh at your funny character, it’s because he isn’t funny.
- Join a writing group and open the windows when you leave the flat. It will smell lovely and fresh when you come home and your girlfriend might finally agree to come over.
- By the way…your laptop is your wife. That cute one that comes over when the flat smells nice is just your bit on the side. Treat her as such. Your loyalty is with your wife and a wife is for life.
- Walk to work. This way you don’t have to waste valuable writing time joining a gym. There is no greater betrayal of the imagination, than joining a gym. Before you know it you’ll be slipping into your imagination and going over the various scenarios of your book.
- Take a pencil and paper with you as you’ll be stopping every ten seconds to scribble these ideas down. It’s probably a good idea to invest in a pencil sharpener, finances permitting.
- Buy a memory stick and type up everything you’ve just written when you get to work because you’ll lose the scraps of paper.
- Get a job where you can write in peace and preferably one without too much responsibility. I strongly recommend the public sector. The perfect job is one in which you are able to do eight hours work in three, thus enabling you to write for the other five. This is the closest you’ll ever get to being a regularly paid writer. Feels great, doesn’t it.
- Ensure you have a boss who doesn’t mind you being late. (see point 5)
- Write a blog. It’s like having a regular mental workout and a good way to track the development of your thoughts. I don’t have a camera and so the blog is the closest thing I have to a photographic album. It’s also a great place to outlet those thoughts you know you’ll never have time to turn into stories but will eat away at you regardless. Like the one about ‘the strange man who used to crouch down every ten seconds by the side of the road to scribble something down. Nobody knew what he was writing or why he did it but…’
- Don’t write a list of top ten writing tips when you haven’t had your novel published yet. It’s arrogant, delusional and distracts you from what matters. As does reading funny quotes by Philip Pullman on a Saturday afternoon.
Instead of writing his novel, James will be chairing a panel on ‘journalism and blogging’ at the Writing Industries Conference, March 6th, Loughborough University.
www.writingindustries.com
www.jameskwalker.co.uk
From first chapters to published novel
Posted on 24th February 2010 at 10:50
Maria Allen writes about her debut novel Before the Earthquake, its roots in her italian heritage and the progress from early chapters to published novel.
My first novel, ‘Before the Earthquake’, is a historical mystery set in southern Italy at the turn of the last century. Concetta, a fifteen-year-old peasant girl, gets seriously injured in an earthquake and once she has slowly recovered from her physical injuries she realises that she has lost her memory of the weeks leading up to the earthquake. Remembering these weeks becomes even more critical when, some months later, it is discovered that she is pregnant. As her family deal with the practicalities of having an unmarried pregnant daughter, Concetta’s personal quest is to solve the riddle of what happened in the weeks before the earthquake struck.
My mother grew up in an area of Italy historically called Irpinia which is a mountainous area inland from Naples. Up until at least the 1950s, the area remained backward and remote, still marked by its feudal past. The life that my mother led in her girlhood would not have been so very different from the life that Concetta lived around fifty years earlier or even what another woman from this place would have lived a hundred years before that. She worked the land every day of the year except religious feast days or to mark marriage or funeral rites and so she, and the other villagers, were intimately connected to the land and what affected it: the weather patterns, the seasons, the cycles of the moon. Their powers and their fears were not only of the physical, what they could touch and see, but of the invisible too, what they could sense or feel and so the supernatural, witches, werewolves, spirits, the physical manifestation of good and bad intention, were as much a part of their belief system as the church and the priest and Sunday mass.
‘Before the Earthquake’ came out of this way of looking at the world, sought to reflect it accurately and authentically. As a writer, the material was plentiful, lots of anecdotes and personal histories and memories, and I felt fortunate to have such privileged access to this world through my mother and other close relatives, people at only one remove from me.
I started writing the novel as part of an MA in Writing at Nottingham Trent University. I did the course full time and the opening section of the novel, equating to the first three chapters came easily to me, almost complete and without much need of editing on the page. Then, with the MA finished, I started working full time and for three years I dried up. I tried to write at weekends, in evenings, even early mornings but nothing worked. Completing the novel would take a greater force of will on my part so I gave up my job in London, moved back to the East Midlands (where I had grown up) and finally started writing again.
There were many difficulties to come of course, of finding an agent and then a willing publisher, but setting that time aside, committing to the book, making it my priority, that was how I got it done. That was how I was able to get my first novel published.
Maria Allen is half Italian, half English and has lived in different parts of Italy and the USA. She has worked as a journalist, in TV research, publishing and most recently in teaching. She lives in Loughborough.
Scripts, ghosts and going a bit Swedish
Posted on 4th February 2010 at 14:08
Our mini round-up of writer bloggers from around the East Midlands continues with:
- Rod Duncan writes about the process of scripting new movie 43 Pounds
- Should review editors offer reviewers a choice? Wonders Emma Lee
- The Phantom Staircase. A ghost story by Harry Riley
- Sally Quilford goes Swedish
- Bianca Winter finds Booker prize winner The Sea sparkly but unfulfilling
Further notes from Jamaica
Posted on 1st February 2010 at 13:23
Lydia Towsey concludes her Letter from Jamaica and asks what makes the work of one writer unique from another.
I’m writing this from Jamaica, but by the time you read it I will be back in the United Kingdom after my two week holiday to this island. I’m staying in Sandy Bay, a tiny village within the parish of Hanover. Far from Kingston, this part of the island is deeply rural. A series of towns runs across the coast line, interspersed by farms, goats and the occasional lean-to. If something isn’t a church it’s probably a bar, tourists are extremely few and far between, the landscape is astounding. But if the pace has been slow the amount to take in has been vast.
I came to Jamaica to write, or more accurately to think about writing: what it is, how you might do it – and why. At the back of my mind, there may also have been the horrendous English weather – weighed against Jamaican beaches and fantastic cocktails..but hey. Whatever order you put things in, I’ve been incredibly lucky; as my guide I’ve had the writer, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, to show me the ropes.
Now based in Leicester, Jean quite sensibly Winter’s in Jamaica with her family. Having the privilage of being able to spend a few weeks of it with her, has made me think about lots of things – but in particular, how a place might directly effect a person’s work.
In many ways, Jamaica is a country of contradictions. On the one hand, island paradise and home to some of the world’s greatest areas of natural beauty, on the other, it is still very much ecomically developing.
In contrast to the UK, state benefits do not exist and people must do whatever they can to get by. Basic infrastructure is lacking; street lights are few and far between, road works start, then stop when the money runs out. There aren’t enough schools so that some have to run several shifts. Hospitals are over crowded and healthcare in them has only just been made free.
Seeing all this first hand, it becomes easy to understand where the political side of Jean’s writing (and that of her cultural contemporaries) is coming from. From the lament of Third World Blues (Riddym Ravings, Race Today) to the anger of Aid Travels with a Bomb (Uncollected) her work is firmly rooted in experience. Nigril beach – with it’s 7 miles of white sand and endless expanse of tourists – is suddenly an illustration for Third World Girl (forthcoming, Cutting a Lime, Bloodaxe) and from Kingston to Sandy Bay, the Mad Woman (Spring Cleaning, Virago) – or man – is only too real.
Outside of political life – if anything really is – other aspects of Jean’s writing and inspiration have also become clear. Last week we visited Patty Hill, the tiny mountain settlement where Jean grew up, and I met her cousin Max. Later I read Easter Lilies (Edge of an Island, Bloodaxe) and discovered how – or at least, an imagining of how – he had come to be the person he was.
On Steamer Beach, I saw the wreck of a ship Jean’s son, Gareth once dived from, then later read Remind Me (Spring Cleaning, Virago), the poem about the day he did so. From poems and stories about ‘Aunt Nor’, her mother, to writings on school and church and love, one thing is clear. Only Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze could possibly have written Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze’s work. Had she been born and raised anywhere else, it would be entirely different.
Understanding this has been incredibly useful. I know it sounds obvious – that each writer has their own unique voice, formed by background and experience – but really seeing it, through the example of one person, has somehow been quite effecting. A poem as wonderful as Ordinary Mawning (Spring Cleaning, Virago) couldn’t have existed without Jean’s upbringing but neither could the work of every other artist – you’ve ever seen, read or heard. Jackie Kay couldn’t have written her Adoption Papers, John Hegley couldn’t have written about his French dad and Luton bungalow.
Looked at like this, every individual experience also becomes precious. If Carol Ann Duffy hadn’t found herself, one night, in love and apart from her lover, her amazing Words Wide Night wouldn’t exist. If Roger McGough hadn’t lived it (or something like it) neither would Summer With Monica.
On a personal level, all this gets me thinking. Ever since going into the Blue Mountains – and drinking Blue Mountain coffee there, I’ve been thinking about my mother: the first time (when I was 8 and she 40) that we drank Blue Mountain coffee together. Where it was, what she looked like, how she held my hand and what she would have felt – had she been here, doing the same, over 2 decades later. If I write it – for good or bad – this will be a poem, that only I could have written. That’s somehow really exciting. It makes me fall in love with writing all over again. It renews my hope. It almost makes me feel more responsible, to my both my work and my experiences.
Looking around, it also makes me intensely curious about everyone else. Right now I’m sitting on the veranda, watching Garnet, the guy who owns the bar across the way, set up. When did he open the bar? What were his parents like? What happened to him yesterday?
A tiny crowd of school kids have just bowled past, rucksacks bigger than their bodies – what about them? What does the tiny one, with the white wrapped pigtails and blue ankle socks, really want to be when she grows up? What’s her family like? What does she like doing, more than anything else?
Not everyone can – or will – tell their story. Not everyone will get to hear it. But if you are a writer, or an artist of any kind, what stories could only you tell? What songs could only you sing? They’re precious. They’re waiting for you to give them life.
Lydia Towsey is a poet and writer. She coordinates and often comperes the spoken word night WORD. When not doing poety things, she is Creative Arts Coordinator for her local NHS Trust. She is also studying towards an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.
Curry and Discipline
Posted on 18th January 2010 at 15:48
From January onwards the Literature Network will be featuring the writing of bloggers around the East Midlands region. Curry, discipline and caffeine may (or may not) be repeating themes.
- M C Rogerson on why revising is like curry. (But is it a nice mild Korma or an extra spicy Vindaloo?)
- Mark Robson on the discipline of writing.
- Harry Riley muses on the task of finding a publisher (or not, as the case may be).
- Does caffeine aid the creative process? Graham Edwards explores.
- Women poets don’t write reviews – allegedly.
To have your blog included please contact: damien@charnwood-arts.org.uk
Looking Ahead at Science Fiction
Posted on 18th January 2010 at 13:57
Damien Walter joins the Guardian Book Podcast to take a look ahead at Sceicne Fiction and Fantasy.A look at the state of SF, the ‘new’ novel from John Wyndham and an interview with star of the ‘new weird’ China Miéville.
Science fiction is the marmite of literature – people tend to love it or hate it. Yet no one could deny that it has produced many of the great myths of our age, from Frankenstein’s monster to William Gibson’s cyber-reality.
SF blogger Damien Walter joins our panellists to discuss where it is now, and why we should all tune in to a genre that can be satirical, prophetic, political and plain good fun, often all at the same time. He also outlines some of the titles to look out for in 2010.
We also look at John Wyndham’s previously unpublished novel, Plan for Chaos, and interview China Miéville, rising star of the “new weird”.
Reading list:
Plan for Chaos, by John Wyndham (Penguin)
The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham (Penguin)
Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Amerbgris series)
A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke (Gollancz)
Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Collins)
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins)
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (Underland Press)
The City and the City, by China Miéville (Macmillan)
Ones to watch in 2010:
Walking the Tree, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot, February)
Kraken, China Miéville (Macmillan, May)
City of Ruin, Mark Charan Newton (Tor, June)
The Wind-Up Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books, September)
A Dance with Dragons, by George RR Martin (HarperVoyager, September)
View all posts by Damien Walter at The Literarture Network
