Today I am feeling not much in the way of positive. Instead I am feeling rather deflated, and not good enough, and rubbish, and sad, and glum, and like a loser. Oh.
If I didn’t win does that make me a loser? (NYP Award)
So, I didn’t win. A lovely guy called Robert Williams did, and you know, he seemed ace which makes it very easy to wish him well. I look forward to selling his book, which I believe is a novel for young adults . The other 2 on the shortlist were also fab (Helen Raymond and Anya Stern) and it was a pleasure to meet them. The evening was tense though. I had to go to Shaftesbury Avenue for the ‘do’ in a club. It was worrying entering the unknown, going through a nondescript wee door, and climbing the stairs to who knew what. I was given a name badge, and entered a room where clusters of people were chatting and drinking. I felt very stupid, nervous and out of place and hastened to a corner. It’s hard to mingle when you feel small and uninteresting! I didn’t want to drink in case I got silly, and I couldn’t eat because I felt too nervous. Anyway, the announcement was eventually made, and I honestly had no expectation that the winner would be me so it was fine, and I smiled and applauded and was finally able to relax. A lovely bonus was that the 3 runners up were given consolation prizes of Book Tokens, which I will have enormous fun spending. (I have a serious pile up in the Staff reservations cupboard.)
Random bits:
One of the judges was Adele Parks and she was bubbly and friendly, and went out of her way to put us at ease and give advice and lots of ‘well dones’.
I can’t believe that for much of my adult life I worked in central London. I only moved a couple of years ago, and already I find it scary with its big, busy, briskness!
The stars outside my house tonight when I got home were so bright and clear I looked up in absolute awe and knew how tiny I am on this spinning planet.
The worst thing about tonight is going to be telling people that I have lost, and them saying never mind, you did really well to get that far, and me saying yes, I truly know that, and them thinking, oh, she’s really upset, and me knowing that I’m not, but also knowing that nobody will believe that and it all being a bit embarrassing instead of the huge whoo hoo ness that it was before they found out that I didn’t win. Does that make any sense at all?
Rice and words.
This is a curious new site, which claims to donate grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger when you correctly identify words. One’s vocab level rises when the words become more difficult, and apparently the revenue to pay for the rice is generated by the sponsors adverts at the bottom of the screen. It is perfectly time wastey, and you can feel good about doing it too!
New six sentences: Stupid Head
I have a new 6 up over at the fabulous six sentence site. This one is called Stupid Head.
Fabulous new short story collections review site: The Short Review
My writing chum Tania Hershman has launched a new site today. It is called The Short Review, and is a place for, da da, reviews of short story collections. The reviews are written by short story writers, and it is going to be a wonderful place to find out about small press publications, classic collections, new big league collections, all short story collections in fact. It looks wonderful already, she has done a brilliant job.
Go look!
http://www.theshortreview.com/index.html
(Oh, and yes, one of the reviewers is me!)
This is how it goes…
This writing I do is not all I am, it is a massive part of me, and without it I feel wrong, but it is not all. I have children, a husband, work, parents, friends, relatives. There are many demands on my time and I squish the writing into spaces in-between. Sometimes the spaces are wide and deep, and I can immerse myself in words, communicating, learning, progressing. Other times the spaces are almost too wee. For the last week or so I haven’t found any space at all. Then I lose my rhythm, and my words seem frozen. I have to begin again at chipping away.
So yeah, lengthy way of saying hi, I haven’t been around.
Oh, and I haven’t been around the blogs either, which has made me realise how addicted to this internet world I am!
Wibbling
I love writing. I love reading. I love telling stories. I love words. It’s my thing. Most people have a thing, whether it’s a love of art/music/film or a need to make minute sculpture, or juggle or garden, or…well, anything. Words are my thing. The essence of it is my desire to communicate I suppose. I write something and I am telling a story, and sending it out to strangers, because I want my story read. Sometimes they see something good in it, they like it, they want it, understand it. And I feel elated, understood and validated. Other times they see something in it that I was unaware was there. They may tell me they thought the way I did x or y was clever/funny or some such, and I will be amazed at this. I haven’t known that it was there, I don’t feel I can take credit for it as it was unconsciously placed. It is magic. That too feels wonderful.
But these words sent out with hope sometimes are ignored, or worse yet, rejected. I enter a competition, and I dream of winning, or of maybe being in the top 3 say, and I get nowhere. It is a rejection. Or I submit a story, and hear back, no thanks, try again. I feel despondent, untalented. They didn’t like my words, so they weren’t good enough words, so I’m not a good enough writer. And I tell myself over and over that reading is subjective, and what one person loves another finds leaves them cold. I know I should just send that story right back out, but I don’t. It has failed, I have failed.
It’s a nervy thing, I am trying to face down my fears and submit work. I currently have 3 pieces out somewhere.
Checking my emails makes me anxious.
The winners of the Pulp.Net/Bloomsbury competition were notified today. Not me then. Ho hum.
This was my Saturday.
A man jabbered at my computer screen in the book shop yesterday:
‘Your computer does not work,’ he shouted as he walked away. This was the first I had seen of him, I smiled.
‘Can I help you?”
‘Your computers don’t work,’ he repeated.
‘Oh? What’s wrong?’
‘They say you have 4 copies of a book but it’s not on the shelf. I phoned and checked that you had the book and was told you had 4 copies. They aren’t on the shelf.’
‘ Did you get an assistant to check for you?’
‘I haven’t got time. I made a special trip here and I’m badly parked.’
‘What is the book? Let me…’
He was gone, down the stairs, shouting about how crap the shop was.
A man who smelt like pooh spent the morning sitting in a chair, browsing books. I wondered if it were a legitimate reason for calling our security guard.
‘Hey, this guy smells shitty, can he be arrested?’
I decided that actually, no, it isn’t an offence!
I spent the day keeping a migraine at bay, taking double strength Ibuprofen and trying to ignore the fact that I was feeling over heated, clammy and queasy.
Waterstone’s has launched a loyalty card. When a customer makes a purchase we swipe the card through the till and points get added which can be used against purchases in the future. Students get 10 percent off at the moment too. The leaflets are displayed at the till points, and many customers are delighted by the idea. But some think that we want to suck their very souls from their body and sell them to Satan. Or something.
A student asked me about the card and discount, I explained, she took the form and began filling it out, and then her mother swooped upon her screeching ‘What are you doing? It’s not worth it? Don’t let them have your details, they want your details.”
The mother then gave me a disgusted look.
Grrr argh etcetera.
An old man came to collect a reserved book, but refused to give his details so that I could complete the requisite paperwork.
Someone asked for a true story about a criminal, that’s pretty much all they knew about the book they had been recommended, so I referred them to the true crime section, but no, it turns out the book is in fiction, so therefore is not true! Which I pointed out when they told me I had got it wrong, but they wouldn’t believe me, even when I showed them the back of the book which said it was literary fiction.
The trains weren’t running so it took me from 7.45 a.m until 9.45 a.m to get door to door. The bouncy replacement bus didn’t help my nausea any as it took an hour and 40 minutes to go where the train does in 40 minutes. I was dreading the journey home, but the bus driver winked and said he wanted to get back fast for his dinner, and he did! I think he was almost as fast as the train.
I did buy a fabulous woolly hat in my lunch break though, so not all bad!
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007
Doris Lessing was the first strong female author I read. As a teenager I read The Golden Notebook, and encouraged others to do so as well. Every time I lent my copy out the borrower would keep it and buy me a new, pristine copy, claiming it was too battered to return, this happened at least 3 times, so I thought of the book as ever more magical.
I read all the Martha Quest novels, I struggled with some of her sci-fi (I’m not so great with sci-fi, no matter how brilliantly written it is, unless it’s Buffy or Angel, which I don’t count as being part of the oeuvre, despite the monsters/demons and so on!) I lapped up the book about an old lady that Ms Lessing submitted anonymously to publishers to prove that a literary name counted over decent writing, and had rejected!
I decided that when/if I am old she is who I would like to look like, grey hair in a bun, intelligent but with a softness, a wrinkled face that shows the life that one has led, the things one has seen.
And then I forgot all about her!
How on earth did I manage that?
I remember noticing a book of cats.
Anyway, this wonderful author has won the Nobel prize for literature (and I think, how is it that she didn’t before now?) The Swedish Academy describe her as “that epicist of the female experience who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.”
On being informed by reporters who waited outside her house she apparently said “I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all. It’s a royal flush,” and sat on her doorstep, fresh from shopping for groceries.
She is 88 on October 22nd, which should be irrelevant, and yet seems wonderful (she was out shopping, and she’s 87 and still witty and sharp, hurrah, or is that ageist?)
Anyway, I feel very pleased.
Kate Atkinson "One Good Turn"
There are certain authors whose books I will buy as they come out (I usually wait for paperback). I do so in the knowledge that I have loved what has gone before and the likelihood is that I will feel the same about their new work. It’s akin to buying music. I adore the Barenaked Ladies, I think that Steven Page and Ed Robertson have gorgeous voices and they write clever, witty songs. They may bring out an album that doesn’t resonate with me as much as a prior one, but it will still be good. I can depend on them. Same is true of my favourite authors. But lately I have been consistently disappointed. I buy a book wanting to love it. I am full of anticipation for this new book by a favourite author. And I am bored, disengaged, and grumpy.
Right now I am reading Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn. It was my treat: a relaxing page turner, a delicious book. I had been looking forward to it since it emerged in hardback last year, having wolfed down Case Histories. I thought highly of Atkinson in the past (“Behind the scenes at the museum” was a fabulous début, unusual, warm, absorbing) but Case Histories interested me because it managed to be both literary and an easy read. A detective mystery with complex twists and well drawn characters. This is a follow on, which revisits Jackson Brodie, the now retired detective. And, to be honest, it’s ploddy. It is cartoonish in its characterisation of a failed comedian, a rep. actress, a mild mannered crime writer, a corrupt business man, foreign escorts, a hired thug and so on. What has happened?
It keeps making me yawn. Really.
And there are some Ben Eltonesque riffs throughout, the same kind of witty musings that appear dotted throughout Catherine Flynn’s “What was lost”. Is there a trend for this or am I only just noticing because I am a grumpy reader right now, all humphs and tsks?
I keep reading the prose and noticing that yes, Atkinson writes well, but there is something missing. Where is the sparkle? Then I wonder if I am merely assuming that because she has written well she still is. Perhaps she has raced through this without customary care. Or is it the wildly implausible plot? I don’t think it can be. I wonder if it is just the wrong time for this book and me.
Sara Crowley 