Picnic Books

 What motivates authors? Well in my case various historical episodes caught my imagination, fixed themselves there and then refused point blank to leave. Although I had written non-fiction, the thought was ever there that, using these events as a basis, I could write a novel or novels.   Equally, I also knew that it would have to wait until I had more time.  So the first thing I want to say is that I have unqualified admiration for those younger authors who, when faced with this dilemma, have decided not to wait – despite the frenetic juggling of personal, professional and family life it must have entailed.

 

The truism has it that you ‘write about what you know’.  In most cases yes, but . . .  some successful books have been written using places, scenarios and situations totally foreign to the writer.  When that transpires, I can only applaud the author’s confidence.  I find I need to have some personal knowledge, however limited that might be.  In most cases it doesn’t markedly reduce the research load, but it does inject that extra scintilla of confidence into your writing.  Or, at least, I hope it does.

 

One thing that writing has also brought home to me is increasing admiration for writers in the pre-computer age.  Nowadays we edit as we go along, changing punctuation here, excising there, moving text at will. Consider the output of literary giants such as say, Dickens, producing what would now be termed ‘blockbuster’ after ‘blockbuster’. It was all done in longhand and consistently under the pressure of publishers’ deadlines. Also, since some of his work appeared in magazines, deadlines could often be monthly or less. As a word, ‘admiration’ begins to feel a little inadequate.

 

Of course there is a plus side to this, in that modern technology has opened up the practicality, not to say the possibility, of writing to many more would-be authors..   Theoretically, this should enhance the literary gene pool by granting access to publication to a much wider range of individual ‘life experiences’.  Unhappily, as we all know, this coincides with a downturn in the economics of publishing.  It’s a case of Sod’s Law raising its head again.

 

As far as the difficulties of getting published is concerned, we’ve all been there, done that . . . but unfortunately didn’t get the ‘T’ shirt at the end of it.  Ben talked in his blog about the almost impossible task facing first time fiction authors wishing to be seriously considered by agents/publishing houses.  I’m perfectly happy to outline my experience which I’m sure is typical. I must have approached between fifty or sixty houses before my first novel was published.  In the main, the experience was soul destroying, but there were occasional chinks of light. Standing out from the ninety plus percent outright rejections or ‘no replies’, were three editors who took the time and trouble to contact me.   They said what they liked about the book and why, for a variety of reasons, they couldn’t take it on. It was these positive responses which kept me going.

 

Then, after this first novel, I ran into an absolute blank wall.  In fact I put my second novel to one side for a while and concentrated on other projects.  So I would like to echo Ben’s comments about Picnic and its willingness to take on non-established authors. It deserves to succeed. As to other publishing houses – let’s hope he is right about the faint glimmerings of a change in attitudes.  This is particularly important in respect of first time authors.  They are, after all, the seed corn of future fiction writing.

 

When I started this blog, my feelings about blogging in general were that it could all too easily degenerate into a self indulgent ramble.  I know that, from time to time, I have come dangerously close to this.  So tomorrow I intend to switch to the much more interesting subject of the techniques other writers use to get through the writing process.

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Something Hidden by Nick Blackstock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.