Metaphors in the Attic

READING: What book did you not enjoy, but motivated you in your own writing?

by Catriona 

This is timely. In the last month I've given up on a recent hit crime novel  - lauded as "original", "a triumph", "blisteringly real", "utterly compelling", "beautiful"  and "astonishingly good" . . . I made it to page fifty before breaking my "give it a hundred pages" rule over my knee and throwing both bits behind me.

Then I read Flowers in The Attic.  Oy, oy, oy.

Flowers in The Attic was yet another bit of American popular culture I felt I'd missed out on that would be worth catching up with. And enough reliable pals praised it - looking at you, Kristopher Zgorski - for me to give it a go.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The incest - consensual between siblings, not child abuse by an adult - was believable in the context and served as evidence of the mess these kids were in. BUT the lingering over the details was still - here comes a literary theory analysis - icky. And I learned nothing. I already knew that the authorial stance you take in relation to potentially titillating details is crucial.

Then - seriously, SPOILERS - one of the kids died. A little boy with golden curls who'd tamed a mouse and learned to play the banjo . . . died.  Not since I switched off that episode of season one of The Wire and sat staring at the black telly screen, have I been so reluctant to believe what my eyes just told me. "Maybe he's been hidden? They didn't see the body. Keep reading."

But no. He died. I didn't exactly learn anything from that. I already knew it was wrong because Stephen King (curtsy) said, on a discussion about the difference between a short story and a novel - "Misery" or Misery -  that "no one wants to root for a guy over three hundred pages only to discover that between chapter sixteen and chapter seventeen . . ."

Of course, little Cory wasn't the hero of FitA. But still there was something off-kilter about his death and its aftermath. It served as a reminder that if you're going to kill a child in fiction, you need to get it right. I think it can't be tidy, facile, quickly handled, plotty, or convenient. It can't be a lesson. It shouldn't have the look of a fridge-magnet homily.  

I think if you're going to kill a fictional kid it should be like that episode of The Wire. It should be shocking. 

But what I really learned from FitA was the importance of pacing. And that's a lesson I badly need*. The book - after Cory's death - fell off a cliff. The plot start to move faster and faster and the resolution I'd been rooting for for three hundred pages wasn't just rushed. It was cursory. I was left with the suspicion that, sometime towards the end of the writing, Andrews got the idea that it was going to be a series and didn't want to leave herself with nothing to say in book two.

I have no evidence for that. But I took it to heart anyway. Forget the career. When you finish a book you should be completely spent; everything on the page and nothing up the sleeve.

*My editor fixes the results of this habit of mine before anyone else ever sees it, by the way. I close the draft with a bang. She pleads for another chapter or two. I moan and do them. She's right. I'm wrong. The book is better than the draft was.

So, all in all, I'm glad I read Flowers in the Attic. I could have lived a happy life without the image of that amaryllis stalk swelling into a plump bud, mind you. That was worse than Hitchcock's worst.

Should have left it here, Hitch.

And the recent "vivid gem", "tragic and brave", "poignant" and "unputdownable"? It was a debut. And it taught me to stop worrying that I maybe don't have another book in me after twenty five of the things have come out of me. Instead, I'm going to be glad I'll never write a first book again.

Yes to everything, by Catriona

"How do you get yourself and your books noticed by the public? We hear that publishers aren't doing so much these days. How do make your work stand out from the crowd?"

Disclaimer: I'm late with a book, getting very close to the revised deadline, stressed and grumpy and some social niceties have evaporated. Also I can't top or even match the magisterial splendour of Cathy's post yesterday. But here's what I found in the corners of my brain when I had a scrape round.

My default position is "yes to everything". If a publicist asks for an interview, listicle or blog post, I say yes. If someone asks me to go to a bookgroup, library event or literacy fundraiser, I say yes. If anyone asks me to do any of the above naked, I'll let you know.

As well as that, my top three tips - if they're coherent enough to be called tips - about publicity and promotion are as follows:

1. A book is like a suitcase full of money

I want to start by echoing what Susan said on Monday. The most important arrow in your PR quiver is a finished, polished, as-good-as-you-can-get-it book. I think it was at Killer Nashville that someone in the audience asked this question of the panel on the podium: "I've written my synopsis and three chapters and I've got a website and business cards. What's next?" The roar of "chapter four" might have been silent but it was deafening too.

It doesn't matter how well you pitch [see below] or how great your swag is; these things are just promissory notes. They try to persuade people that you have a suitcase and it's full of money. You might be convincing and they might believe you. But flinging open the lid and showing the treasure is something else again.

2. y book in my book in my book in my book in my book in my book in my book in my book in my b

It's not a good idea to bore people if you're hoping they'll spend 10+ hours with you. And few things are more boring than verbal synopses of books you haven't read. It's almost never a good idea spontaneously to talk about the plot, characters or setting of your book except in a book group, where people have read it and can join in. In a nutshell, I'd say never pitch a book unless someone has just asked you to. How do you know when you're pitching? The phrase "in my book" could be included.

It was at the bar at Bouchercon that a man asked me what I wrote. I said "preposterous 1930s detective stories". He replied: "Ah, cozies. Not for me. But you should read my stuff." He gave me a business card. "In my book ..." he went on (and on (and on)). Guess whether I pounded straight to the dealers' room to snap up his book. Go on. Guess.

3. There are worse things than telling Stephen King you love Lisey's Story (but don't lick his face).

So, I can imagine someone reading No. 2 and muttering: "Well, what are we supposed to talk about then, Miss Bossy Knickers?" And my reply is . . . be a reader first. Share the joy of books instead of the miseries of publishing. At conventions, in newsletters, on your website, while teaching workshops, on social media, in the bar, on the bus . . . talk about the books you love. With fellow readers, find out what they love - find one you've both read. Do the same with fellow writers. With heroes, I think it's perfectly all right to say thank you and tell them you love their books, even to let them know what your favourite is. 

But no licking faces.

Secret option C.

by Catriona.

"Would you rather have fame or fortune?"

I'm assuming that "as a writer" is understood, and that changes everything.

For one thing, the most famous writer in the world isn't all that famous anyway. J.K. Rowling can still sit typing in the café in Edinburgh undisturbed. Really. I've seen her there. Of course, she does it with some kind of magical facial expression. If she could bottle and sell that "don't even think about it" look she'd be a rich wo- Oh.

And even if a famous writer gets recognised and mobbed by fans, they're book fans. They're readers. They're not natural mobbers. I'm trying to imagine a crowd of readers screaming and fainting and snatching the clothes off the back of . . . Stephen King. But I'm failing.

I got a bit flummoxed when I first met Mary Higgins Clark, but all that happened was I stepped back in case she thought I was standing too close and I tripped over the tripod stand that the "Mary Higgins Clark" poster was propped up on. It made a clatter but no security was involved.

So, all in all, I think extreme fame for a writer isn't enough actual fame to spawn a monster. I'm going to Harrogate today and I'll be seeing Simon Brett, who has just been awarded an OBE and a diamond dagger and is having a special reception thrown for him. If he expects me to curtsy and/or is now travelling with a personal grape-peeler, I'll edit this blog to reflect it.

How about fortune?

We hear a lot about people whose lives are ruined by lottery wins but, again, I think it's different for writers. I don't know anyone who does it for the money and I don't know anyone who would stop doing it if they suddenly had a wet ton of money. And money wouldn't really help with any bit of the core of what being a writer is. It wouldn't bring ideas, or a publishing deal, or a sympathetic editor, or readers, or good reviews, or an extension on the next hand-in date.

Of course, a huge steaming heap of filthy lucre would bring some incidentals: a hired publicist, a PA, freedom from a day-job, research trips with leg-room on the plane and a posh hotel room . . . but those things don't bring ideas or readers either.

So I'm going for secret option C. I'd rather have writing. If that's guaranteed I'll take the lie-flat plane seat and PA, please. (But I want to keep going to the Post Office myself because I like the people who work there and I'd miss them.) And then if I had to accept being so famous that klutzy fellow authors backed into tripods, I'd cope with that too,