October 2006 - Posts
Having totally run out of ideas for my book launch I was thinking about the matter of lectures.
I always hope to learn from lectures, after all the person giving it must know something or he wouldn't be there at all. There is normally a pattern. Smile at sycophantic chairman. Read a bit of book. Answer questions. Sign as many books as possible. Go for meal at posh restaurant with sycophantic chairman.
If you really like the author you will probably have bought the book anyway, or reckon that in a few months time you'll be able to buy the paperback in Tescos for £4.99 and save £10 by not getting the hardback.So the best time to leave is before the questions. These are always irrelevant, total nonsense and asked by people who are barking mad. By leaving early it is possible to be first out of the car park, so long as the person asking irrelevant questions hasn't parked across the exit.
One lecture I remember was given in a small seminar room designed by a superstar architect, who cleverly combined poor acoustic design with a large window overlooking a busy street. This resulted in nobody in the audience hearing anything. The day was saved, however, by a schoolboy cricket match being played across the road and visible through the window. At first it attracted some of my attention and then all of my attention. I didn't learn much about writing that evening, but I did learn a lot about how not to play a turning ball.
A celebration. 500 pages of Ulysses read and toasted in Guiness. The summit still far off and hidden in rhetoric but only 34 pages to half way. Few have reached this far, fewer still have made the final assault and survived.
I have been writing reviews of children's books for my recommended list on Amazon. The secret is to choose thin books if a few extras are needed.
I am also beginning the building of my wife's website. Robyn teaches children to read and is starting her own business offering courses to parents. I am computer literate to the extent that I do terribly well until I foul everything up and have to be rescued by an expensive expert. So far I have achieved an address. I am about to need an expert.
Now we know the Man Booker winner, Kiran Desai. She has impeccable literary credentials. She studied at Columbia University and her mother Anita Desai was short listed for the Man Booker three times. I have not read her book, due to my Ulysses project. It may well be a work of genius, but it does make me wonder about the criteria for choosing a Man Booker winner. Sarah Waters didn't win (told you so), last year Julian Barnes didn't win and sure as eggs is eggs Joanna Trollope will never win. Yet they are all hugely popular, so they must be doing something right.
So perhaps the Man Booker winners these days must have potential, but that means the writers are being judged not the books. The answer would be for only anonymous unpublished manuscripts to be considered. But then it wouldn't be the Man Booker we know, love and worry about.
We all need editors. It is amazing how many obvious errors can be missed completely by writers editing their own work. These days publishers expect edited work for their consideration. No longer will they bash into shape a manuscript handwritten in green ink complete with errors and tied in red ribbon. It's get it right or forget it. So freelance editors proliferate and charge big bucks for their services.
I have an advantage in that my wife, The Lady Poet, edits a lot of work for me. The arguments over the position of commas and my tendency to give children detailed instructions on the manufacture of explosive devices are long and loud. There are times when an outlay of big bucks becomes rather attractive. A danger is that a freelance editor might tell me to do just what my wife has been telling me all along. Sadly it has happened, with predictable results.
However it is achieved editing is a humiliating and depressing process not to be experienced by the faint hearted or the thin skinned. But to be positive, it does prepare writers for humiliating and depressing experiences with Agents and Publishers.
I am now on page 483 of Ulysses. I think I'm speeding up.
They say always carry a camera. Yesterday in Ely I saw a mother duck and three fluffy ducklings crossing the road on a zebra crossing. A picture made in tabloid heaven passed unrecorded. So I misssed the chance to circulate my very own Abbey Road photo to the world's press.
At present I am reading Ulysses. The greatest novel of the 20C we are told. Not quite as scary as expected but still an Everest to climb. I'm on page 467 out of 1078. A lot of pages for a walk round Dublin. Should I reach page 1078 I will have joined a rather small club of Ulysses finishers. Progress will be reported, this week it was about three pages.
I carry on arranging the on line sales campaign of my book. Writing the sales letter is not easy. The style my American sales guru asks for is not what we would write this side of the pond. In fact I'm amazed I can write it at all. "Go for the biggest market," he says, not worried about upsetting the smallest. We will see in November when it launches.