Reviews and other ramblings
I like a current song! This is a rare thing indeed. Not that I never like new music, but I tend to be at least six months behind discovering it. This is one of the few things that make me feel old. But back to that song:
Writing a novel is hard. Really, really hard.
This is not the first time I’ve ever done creative writing. But historically I wrote when an idea struck, whatever time of day or night that might be, a fevered hour or two, then the moment was over. I have an awful lot of disconnected scenes scattered around in various notebooks (I like to write longhand to start with, ideally).
But this year, inspired by friends/very nice people on the internets, plus the vague sense of needing to write creatively (and not having done much of that in the past five years) I signed up to NaNoWriMo, which is essentially a challenge to write a novel in a month, or at least 50,000 words of a first draft of a novel.
I was surprised to find that at first it was relatively easy to fit in writing on work days. I created a slot for it in my daily routine. Weekends and other days off are determinedly unstructured, so that was harder. I like a good lie-in, not getting dressed until mid-afternoon, so it can be hard to make myself switch into work mode and get on with it.
I have to agree with this brilliant blog post that writers are hard to live with. To write, I need to shut everything out for hours on end. It’s not like reading a book where I can be interrupted for a conversation or an offer of/request for a cup of tea. And because I was fitting it around a full-time job and I have limited energy thanks to the delights of lupus I had to drop something so I dropped doing housework, which was delightful for Tim I’m sure (I should point out that Tim has been super-supportive, picking up the slack and encouraging me to write even when it meant we barely exchanged five words a day).
Unfortunately it was all too much and in week two I burned out. I’m not sure if it was a lupus flare or if I will never be able to do that much every day but I felt that zombie feeling come over me and knew I had to stop. So I stopped worrying about word counts and fitting everything else around NaNoWriMo, and just tried to do some writing when I could (not every day). Which means that I didn’t “win” – my final word count yesterday was 31,018 – but that’s 31,018 words of which some might even be reasonably not awful and an idea for a novel that might be an okay one. So for now I won’t just drop it because NaNoWriMo is over. And maybe next year I’ll do some planning before November and try to plan some time off work and make a bit more of NaNoWriMo. Either way, it feels good to be writing again, and that was really the point.
Today we have something a little bit different. I am handing you over to talented local author Emma Newman, who will explain all.
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This is the fourth in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in the Split Worlds. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here.
The price of art
“Not one?”
“No.”
Clive sat heavily on the crate, feeling the cold air of his workshop for the first time that morning.
“I did warn you,” the sneer leaked into her voice. “There’s just no demand for big installations by unknown artists. It’s the recession.”
“Yeah,” Clive croaked. “The recession.”
“So you’ll have them picked up by the end of today?”
“Yeah,” Clive tried to sound convincing. He didn’t have the money to hire the specialist removal firm to get the pieces back to the workshop. He’d banked on at least one being sold to cover some of his costs. “See you later.”
He chucked the mobile onto the table, its landing cushioned by piles of unpaid bills. He’d pulled in every favour to make the exhibition happen, put every last pound into getting people through the door and it had come to less than nothing.
He tried to remind himself that he still had his health, and that he hadn’t been caught for stealing the lead off the local park’s bandstand roof when he couldn’t afford to buy new materials. A lack of illness and a non-existent criminal record were poor comfort faced with losing his workshop and tools. Was it time to get a boring job in a boring office with boring people?
A loud knock echoed through the workshop. He froze, wondering if it was the first bailiff. At the second knock, he stood slowly, keeping silent.
“Mr Pascoe?” It was a man. “Are you in there? I need to discuss your work.”
A ruse to make him come to the door?
“I saw the exhibition, I want to buy your installations.”
Clive tripped over a pizza box as he hurried to unlock the door. “Sorry,” he said, tucking his shirt in. “I was out the back. Come in, come in.”
The man was in his fifties, wearing a pinstripe suit and the air of authority. His eyes were the same colour of the copper sulphate crystals Clive had used in his first installation, his hair a greying blonde.
“Mr Pascoe?” At Clive’s nod he extended a hand. “I’m Mr Neugent.”
“Would you like a drink?”
The brilliant blue eyes scanned the lone crate, the instant coffee jar and pile of cups in the grimy sink. “No thank you, I don’t have a great deal of time. You’re a very talented artist Mr Pascoe.”
“Call me Clive, please. You went to the exhibition?”
“Yes. Twice. I wanted to be sure.”
“The gallery owner said there wasn’t any interest.”
Neugent smiled. “I have no interest in dealing with middle men. I know that gallery takes a steep commission. I would rather all of the money go to you. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Not at all,” Clive grinned. The snooty cow had only agreed to exhibit with a hefty commission rate after a lot of hassle. “Which one are you interested in?”
“All of them,” Neugent replied. “Here’s a cheque, I can have them picked up from the gallery, discreetly, if that’s convenient?”
Clive nodded, feeling the flush burning in his cheeks.
“I also have a proposition,” Neugent opened the briefcase. “I work for a company with offices and public buildings all over the world. Your work is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I want to commission you for ten more pieces, with a view to a long term contract should my employer like your work as much as I do. I took the liberty of preparing a contract.”
Clive took the stapled pages with a shaking hand. “Can I read this over?”
“Of course, take your time. Perhaps you’d prefer to have your solicitor look over it.”
“Thanks,” Clive reined in the urge to dance a jig.
“It’s a standard contract and we’ll provide access to any raw materials you require. One of our subsidiary companies deals in metal, we can get you whatever you need at a fraction of the cost you’ve been used to.”
“Great,” Clive tried not to grin too much.
“Here’s my card,” Neugent handed it over. “I look forward to hearing from you soon.”
Clive waited a few moments after he left, then whooped so loud it echoed around the workshop. When there was another knock on the door he thought it was Neugent again and opened it straight away. A woman smiled, dressed in an emerald green coat and looking like she’d stepped off a film set.
“Mr Pascoe?”
He took in the same green of her eyes, the rich brown of her hair and the perfection of her skin. She was almost too beautiful.
“My name is Amelia Rose. I wanted to talk to you about your art, may I come in?” He nodded dumbly again.
“Did you go to the exhibition?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like my work?”
“Can I be frank?”
“Of course,” he said, with the cockiness of a man who’d already sold it.
“You’re extraordinarily gifted,” she began, glancing around the workshop as she pulled off her gloves. “But you’re working with the wrong materials. Metal just isn’t right for you.”
His cheek twitched. “Someone’s just bought all of those pieces, and commissioned me for more.”
She glanced at the card and contract still held in his hands. “Oh, Mr Neugent has been here already I see. Promised you a long term contract and lucrative deal I suppose?” At his nod she smiled sadly. “He always makes an offer one can’t refuse. I hoped I’d be able to speak to you before he got his claws in, but I suppose it’s too late.”
She headed back towards the door, he stopped her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s only interested in money, not art. He has a gift for finding hungry artists and sucking them dry. By all means, take the money Mr Pascoe. In a few years you may be comfortably well off but you’ll be burned out and unable to create anything original ever again.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen it happen before,” she said sadly. “But I know you need the money. Good luck.”
“Wait,” he stopped her with a gentle touch on her shoulder. “Which materials do you think I should work with?”
She looked up at him, straight into his eyes. “Wood, Mr Pascoe. Oak, willow, ash, your hands would craft them into something magnificent.”
“I don’t know anything about working with wood.”
“I had a teacher lined up for you, and a patronage agreement all worked out,” Amelia sighed, stroking the palm of her hand with the gloves. “But I should imagine that cheque is worth more to you. Unless…” she reached towards his face, touching his cheek lightly. Anyone else and he would have flinched away, but he found himself just staring back at her. “Unless, I can convince you to value your art more.”
“But I have debts.”
“I’ll pay them off. I’ll give you somewhere better to live and a comfortable salary. Nothing as ostentatious as Neugent offers, but I will ensure you reach your full artistic potential. Which is more important to you Mr Pascoe? Wealth, or art?”
He felt calm, blissful. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he tore the cheque and the contract in two.
“I’m so glad you made the right decision,” Amelia purred. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
—
Thanks for hosting Kate! I hope you enjoyed the story. If you would like to find out more about the Split Worlds project, it’s all here: www.splitworlds.com. If you would like to host a story over the coming year, either let me know in the comments or contact me through the Split Worlds site. Em x
There were two panels at BristolCon based around “real” science: “When did science become the bad guy?” and “Sci-fi now”. Both were interesting discussions and shared a few panel members so I thought I’d write them up together.
(Apologies by the way, for the scatty and delayed nature of this post. I wrote it weeks ago and then NaNoWriMo started and I didn’t get round to tidying it up. And now I must get back to writing that novel…)
Tim Maughan kicked us off with the declaration that science is not considered uncool itself, but understanding it is. All these shiny new TV shows about science are pretty but have little or no depth, and certainly don’t teach anything new (though, as a counterpoint, he still rates Sky at Night). Eugene Byrne suggested that this dumbing down was part of a general increased shallowness of the media. In fact, he was quite positive, comparing the 1980s general fear of science to the current feeling that science is an important tool and the great enthusiasm for technology and gadgets. He also controversially put forward the idea that raised tuition fees will be good for science, because potential students will likely lean towards more practical subjects with firmer career prospects.
Simon Breeze made the suggestion that the Internet generation couldn’t build the Internet, which I have to say I disagree with. But I could see how someone might think that – as Jonathan Wright pointed out, technology has advanced so much so quickly that you can’t just learn how things work by taking them apart. Tim Maughan added the interesting point that state schools in the UK teach computing, including HTML and basic coding, but public schools don’t go near it, staying as always behind the times but also creating an odd reverse snobbery.
But what about the cool future science we all thought we’d have by now and don’t? This discussion kept coming back to the idea that technologies are developed when we need them. And of course some things turn out different from exactly what was envisaged. Paul McAuley thought teleportation might be useful, but suggested that the long queues for the booths might make it only fractionally quicker than flying. And drones barely feature in old science fiction yet are becoming scarily real (in military use). Tim Maughan pointed out that the car that drives itself is imminent and Eugene Byrne suggested that increased age and disability in western populations will accelerate technologies like robot cars. Dev Agarwal suggested that the same might be true of investment in cybernetics – e.g. for making people walk again.
The panel all agreed, in response to an audience question, that the future science fiction of 1984 is scarily close to coming true – and we’re all willingly helping it along. From Internet security measures that save our every search term and movement on the Web, to store cards that track our purchases, to CCTV, to social media where we announce our every action, we are creating the surveillance culture that Orwell envisaged, only we’ve forgotten to be horrified by the idea.
Thought-provoking stuff.
Today marks the start of a new project from local author Emma Newman – Split Worlds. For a year and a day, Em will be posting stories, games and puzzles in the urban fantasy setting of the Split Worlds.
I discovered Em on Twitter and managed to meet her in the real life last month at BristolCon, where we attended a reading of one of her short stories, from her collection From Dark Places. I’ve read two stories from the Split Worlds so far and really like the slightly sinister atmosphere.
Just sign up to receive the first short story and notifications of new content. Go, enjoy!
The discussions and readings at BristolCon were all excellent but I did particularly enjoy “Reviews: threat or menace?”. As the panel pointed out, the title suggests that reviews can only be bad or more bad, yet most of them were both reviewers and authors and had some interesting thoughts on the process.
Juliet McKenna‘s view was that both reading and writing reviews can give you a snapshot of what’s new out there. She is reluctant to trash a book in a review, as she knows how much hard work has gone into writing it. Jonathan Wright agreed that it can be too easy to slag off a book, that that style of writing can come far too easily. Paul McAuley continued that as a bright young thing, the easiest way to get noticed is to be funny and slag off the books you review, but he is now ashamed of having written damaging reviews, and that’s a large part of the reason he stopped reviewing regularly.
Juliet McKenna raised the point I have heard elsewhere about the responsibility of the reviewer to present a fair cross-section of what’s out there. Stats collected by Vida and Strange Horizons show that in the UK and US approximately 44% of books are written by women, yet less than 30% of books reviewed are by women. Although this bias is unconscious, once known about it should be acknowledged.
A quick check of my reviews index shows that to date I have reviewed 46 books by women and 76 by men (i.e. not quite 38% women). And apparently male reviewers have a much stronger bias towards reading male writers. (Incidentally, my current TBR is much worse, standing at 26 books by women versus 77 by men. If ever I needed an excuse to buy more books!)
But in general the views about reviews and reviewing were positive, despite the event’s title.
I’m finally getting round to writing down some thoughts about Saturday’s adventures at BristolCon. There’s so much to tell that I will come back to this topic again. But let’s start with the spoils. These are the books that Tim and I came home with:
That’s a combination of free, secondhand and new books. There were also badges and fridge magnets and goodness knows what else in our goody bags. The USB stick in the picture is yet another book, in digital form, by local author Tim Maughan. My TBR is most definitely up in three figures again!
I should probably mention that it will likely take me some time to get round to reading any of those books because this year I am taking part in NaNoWriMo, so all my November free time is going towards that. (Which also means that theoretically I will be blogging less.)
In general I loved the day and I’m torn between wanting it to be much better known and bigger next year, and liking it small and friendly as it was. The day ended with a quiz that Tim and I came last in, so despite thinking we’re pretty geeky, turns out we have a lot to learn!
I am a bit behind on my reading (and indeed everything else) thanks to a nasty bout of food poisoning this week. I’m recovering now but still feeling a tad fragile, like this butterfly.
I’m in Devon for some recuperating with a good friend and the sea air and a giant stack of books. Hopefully I’ll return feeling healthier.
So I am breaking with tradition (my own self-imposed one-and-a-half-year-old tradition, that is) and actually taking part in a readalong! The Discovering Daphne season is a month-long Daphne du Maurier readalong hosted by Simon of Savidge Reads and Polly of Novel Insights. As a Daphne fan, how could I resist?
Also this month is the first ever Bristol Festival of Literature. It runs from 14 to 23 October in venues all over the city and features some fascinating-sounding discussions about publishing and writing, as well as all the usual author events.
With some crossover with, but organised separately from the literature festival, on 22 October it’s BristolCon11. It’s the third year for the science fiction and fantasy convention, which I only stumbled across thanks to Twitter but am now eagerly looking forward to attending. There will be some big names there including Paul McAuley and Justina Robson.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, this weekend the Royal Society throws open its doors for the One Culture festival where “some of the best novelists, scientists, poets and historians will explore the crosscurrents between science and culture”. I sadly can’t get to London for that – my weekend is busy enough already – so I’ll be looking out for reports on how it went.
Cathy of Kittling Books is featuring me today in her fantastic Scene of the Blog series, so hop on over and check it out!
I was very excited to be asked to contribute. Lots of excellent book bloggers have been featured previously. Check them out too!