Guest Post: No Idea Is Wasted: Nicola Morgan

I am a big smug show-off because I have lots of writer-friends. But I almost never ask my friends to discuss their own books on my blog because it gets embarrassing when I don't like their books.

There's no danger of that happening today. When the wonderful Nicola Morgan (who we all know, right?) asked me if I'd host one of the stops on her blog tour I was pleased to say yes because I knew it would be a good book; now I've read Wasted, I know that it's a fabulous one. Wasted is one of the best books I've read all year and if you feel even slightly put off by the idea of reading a book for young adults, don't be: if ever there was a crossover title, Wasted is it.

Right. Nicola now owes me at least a tenner. Over to her.


First, thanks so much to Jane for letting me visit her blog! [I should hope so too! -J] I've never done a blog tour and it feels like a lot of fun. Since Jane's blog is about publishing and how it works, I thought I'd say something about ideas and how they work before publication - and if any of you writers are at that horrible stage of feeling that your idea just isn't going to work or isn't going to be published, I hope you'll take heart from what I'm about to tell you.

***

In theory, I don't believe that "everything has a purpose". In practice, I make damned sure it does.

It was a simple chance event on a London underground station that got me thinking about luck, chance and randomness and led many years later to my new novel, Wasted. It wasn't an earth-shattering event but it got me thinking. Obsessively. So, I began a novel for adults - I'd two unpublished ones languishing already - about chance, quantum mechanics, and unpredictability, involving repeated multiple possibilities. The idea was that if there is a god - which I know there isn't - he will either play dice or at least have a lot of fun observing. But halfway through, a completely different idea hit me, this time for teenagers. I abandoned god and quantum
physics.

That new idea became my first published novel, Mondays are Red. And then came others and suddenly I was a YA novelist and left the adult stuff behind. The other book lay half-written somewhere. But ideas are never wasted. They become other things. They strengthen the foundations of our writing lives. Sometimes, later, they seek sunlight. So, after 15 years, thedormant seed sown randomly in a London underground station began to grow and I began to write it. I didn't look at the first version because this one would be different. I was different by then, though still fascinated by chance and luck.

A bit of my heart is in all my books, naturally, but Wasted has all of me. When I started it this second time, I didn't care about publication. I decided not to show my editor and or get my agent to ask for a contract. It was a case of, "If you like it, you can have it; if you don't, I'm writing it anyway and sod anyone else." This was my story and no one could stop me writing it.

She loved it, as did my agent. It was a wonderful feeling: writing the book I always wanted to write. And although I want some people, enough people, any people, to love it too, the odd thing is that I slightly don't care if lots of people don't. Obviously, I hope readers don't say horrible things...

I guess you want to know about the incident, the random event on a London Underground station? I had travelled from Edinburgh, where I live, to London for my first ever business-trip, first public-speaking event. (I was a dyslexia specialist then.) I'd done the event and my head was spinning; I was high on adrenaline and seeing things in a brighter light. For some reason which I will never understand, I decided to take a different underground route from the obvious one. So, I was on an escalator at Charing Cross station, when I should have been at Victoria.

What happened was trivial really, the sort of thing that happens all the time: you see someone you know, somewhere they shouldn't be. So, I saw a friend from Edinburgh, on the same escalator. We were both shocked, laughed, and had that "fancy meeting you here, 350 miles from home" conversation. Nothing happened - we didn't have an affair or even a drink!

Now, maybe it was my heightened adrenaline, something getting the creativity going, but I had a light-bulb moment, a kind of "thought experiment" which has absolutely obsessed me ever since. It was: "What if there was something like a god, who could observe every human and know everything about them; and what if he could see everyone passing and meeting and mostly not meeting and weaving unpredictably from place to place, NEVER aware how narrowly they had just missed an important encounter with someone they knew or someone who might influence their lives? What if humans could be tracked like radioactive particles, bobbing around in a kind of Brownian motion, in patterns, and that the god was sitting there cackling at the powerlessness of these poor humans as they went down that street or took that turning or missed that train or smiled at that person or had this thought caused by that sight or sound or breath of air on their face? What if he could show us all that, and we could observe the almost happenings, the near-misses, and if we could, just by observing, change the tiniest things that affect lives invisibly? And what if we could then tell the story of some of those things, show the inner workings of our world?"

And that, essentially, is the idea behind Wasted. And if it hadn't been for that trivial coincidence on a London escalator, in my state of heightened adrenaline, I would never have written it.

To all writers: when you have to give up an idea - if it wasn't working, didn't get published, whatever - it's not wasted. One day, you might see how to write it entirely differently, and better. If not, the seed can lie dormant for as long as it's needed, and when the right time comes you will find a way to grow it. Or if you don't, it will still strengthen you. So, never view an idea as wasted.

Nicola Morgan


Wasted is Nicola Morgan's new young adult novel, published today. She has created a special blog for the book, with competitions and stacks of background information, ideas, snippets and fascinating discussions about chance, risk and luck. Do visit it for some really interesting fun!

Guest Review: Twelve Short Stories And Their Making

My thanks to Paul Lamb for bringing this lovely little book to my attention, and for letting me reproduce his review of it, which originally appeared on his blog last year.


I’ll confess at the start of this post that I don’t have a high respect for most how-to writing guides. I’m not sure that fiction writing can be taught. Having said that, though, I do think it can be learned. In my experience this is done in two ways: extensive reading and exhaustive writing. We’re on our own for the second part, but occasionally we can find a little help with the first part.

I recently finished reading 12 Short Stories and Their Making, an anthology collected by Paul Mandelbaum and published in 2005 by Persea Books. Within are twelve richly textured short stories followed by interviews with their authors. Among the writers included are familiar names like Sandra Cisneros, Ellen Gilchrist, Gail Godwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Tobias Wolff. Each author’s story is presented first, and it is followed by a conversation between Mandelbaum and the author. The conversations provide insight into the varying creative processes of these diverse writers.

This isn’t a book telling you how to write your short story. Rather, it is a book telling you how these authors wrote their short stories. The conversations describe how the stories came to be written the way they were as well as how they couldn’t have been written in any other way. We see what their motivations and intentions were. Sometimes we see what other writing has influenced them or what incidents in their lives found their way into the stories and why. Mandelbaum also manages to tease some technical discussion from each writer. By offering these insights, this book lets all of us see how it might be done and so perhaps plumb our murky depths to find our own motivations. It gives us a sort of permission to venture down new creative roads.

The anthology does not try to be all things to all writers. Rather, it takes a more measured approach, offering two selections for each of the categories: character, plot, point of view/voice, setting, structure, and theme. The stories are arranged by which category they best illustrate. With a breakdown like this, and with the in-depth interviews that follow each story, this book might deserve a place on your reference shelf.

For my part, I always like to read anthologies because I get introduced to writers I have not tried before. Often I find a new favorite among them. Persea Books has several other writer-focused anthologies that might merit your attention as well.

Yes, The Internet Does Count

I read two very similar blog posts last week: this one from Janet Reid, and this one from The Rejectionist.

Both make the point that it's important for writers to take care over their writing: to use the words they mean to and not ones which sound the same; and to check their work carefully before submitting.

I'd add that writers should extend these habits to include all written work they make public. And yes, that includes emails, tweets, and comments on message-boards and blogs, because those online comments are tied to our names. They stay around for a very long time and just supposing that an editor or an agent types our names in to Google, do we really want them to discover that we're often sloppy and careless with our words?

Learn Writing With Uncle Jim: A Celebration

Six years ago today, a discussion called Learn Writing With Uncle Jim began on the Absolute Write message board. The Uncle Jim in question is SF writer James D Macdonald, who is perhaps better known as Yog, of Yog's Law fame. Learn Writing With Uncle Jim has now expanded into a second volume, and has grown into one of the most useful discussions about writing that there is.

If you write fiction then you will find things in it which will help you. If you write non-fiction, then you probably will too. If you're not sure it's for you, have a look at this partial index of the discussion and I'll bet that you'll find something there which interests you; if you'd like to read all of Mr Macdonald's posts without comments from other readers you can find them here; and if, confronted with all that linky goodness you find the discussion's length and detail a little daunting, just dip into it. Start reading. You'll soon see what I mean.

And while you're at Absolute Write, have a little look around: you might find a celebration or two going on. And if you would like to thank Mr Macdonald for his help and encouragement, then there's a something you can do which is guaranteed to please him: buy his books.

How I Got Published (Part I): Daniel Blythe

Daniel Blythe is one of those rare creatures: a writer who makes his living from his writing work. He's also a regular contributor to this blog, and can be found in the comments-streams on many of my posts. His latest book is Autonomy, and is a Doctor Who novelisation. Here's the story of his route into publication: I hope that it will be the first of many to appear here.


I've learned a few lessons from my years of being published – not all of them pleasant. They are:

1) Philip Pullman was absolutely right when he said that the three things you need are talent, luck and hard work, and that the only one you have any control over is the hard work.

2) You probably aren't ready to be published when you think you are.

3) Even after you have become published, most people in publishing will treat you like an annoyance, a lackey or an irrelevance. The fact that there would be no "publishing industry" without you and thousands like you is totally lost on them.

My breakthrough – after a couple of years of unpaid short stories in the small press and so on – came in 1992 when Peter Darvill-Evans of Virgin Books invited submissions for his range of original Doctor Who fiction, a new idea at the time. My proposal for The Dimension Riders was accepted in 1992 and the book came out in November 1993 in time for the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who. It was hugely exciting to see stacks (yes, really, stacks) of my books in bookshops – on shelves, on tables and even on the floor. And it was very satisfying to keep sneaking into these bookshops and moving them to even more prominent positions.

After that, I did a second book for Peter's successor at Virgin, Rebecca Levene, called Infinite Requiem, which sold pretty much the same – both books received a small advance (under £2k, as I recall) but did very well in royalties. Virgin knew what they were doing. They could afford to take on new, unknown writers and pay them peanuts, because it was the Doctor Who brand and Sylvester McCoy's face doing the selling. One more short story in a Virgin anthology and I moved on – very amicably. I tried them with a couple more ideas, I think, but nothing really gelled.

I was trying my "proper novels" with editors, and receiving often quite patronising responses. The fact that I was published – *published*! – and my books had sold tens of thousands of copies was met with an indifferent shrug from the Katies and the Melissas. But I'd been writing what became The Cut, and this helped me to get an agent. I queried ten, but the one I eventually found was young, keen, clever and seemed on my wavelength. We met up in London for a chat, and clicked. She took me on, read the first half of The Cut and seemed very enthusiastic about selling it. Over the course of the next few months, she tried several publishers and got the frustration of the "rave rejections" – i.e. "we love it, but..." Eventually it ended up on the desk of Tony Lacey at Penguin and it happened to be the sort of thing he was looking for. It was published as a Penguin paperback in 1998, and got decent bookshop exposure and went to a reprint. The advance was a mid-range four figures, but I was just happy to have anything. I had an agent, who had sold my novel to a big publisher. Things were up and running, and I was still only twenty-eight.

I'd like to say this started off a productive and long-running association with Penguin, but I'd be lying. They bought my next novel, Losing Faith – for about double the advance paid on The Cut – and then sneaked it out into the bookshops under cover of darkness, with about as much publicity as the Much Binding In The Marsh Fete gets. In fact, I'm sure the Much Binding Fete gets a lot more, as it would have a notice in the parish newsletter and a mention in the Binding Gazette. To everyone's feigned astonishment but mine, Losing Faith didn't do terribly well in trade paperback and Penguin declined a) the option on my next book and b) to do the B-format paperback of Losing Faith.

I am normally a mild-mannered person. But this is the only time I can recall actually screaming and swearing (most unprofessionally) down the phone at my agent. I literally could not understand how this had happened. It was in the contract that they would do the paperback. It was IN. THE. CONTRACT. So that was my lesson for 1999 – a publishing contract, when they want it to be, is not worth the paper it's written on. I'd been pinning a lot of hopes on the paperback – being told I was not having one really felt like being kicked while I was down.

I kept my agent. It wasn't her fault. (And where, after all, was I going to find another one? It would be like dumping a nice girlfriend just because she hadn't helped you not to lose your job.)

But it was my lowest point as a professional writer. I had assumed – naively – that once you were published, it opened doors. That you would no longer be ignored and treated like the least important cog in the machine. That the advances gradually crept up, sneaking towards "proper salary" level, until the big breakthrough novel on Book Five or Six, when it would all go mad. To say I'd had a major reality-check would be an understatement.

So there I was at the age of twenty-nine, feeling as if I was right back at the start again. Where did it all go wrong? Where would it go from here?

Luckily, an opportunity was just around the corner – one which would change my writing life for ever...


And no, it wasn't meeting me, as Daniel and I didn't become acquainted until much later on. You can read the second part of his story next Tuesday, and if you have your own story of publication which you'd like to see featured here, email it to me at "HPRW at tesco dot net". I'll look forward to hearing from you.

How I Got Published: Tell Your Story

I keep reading comments online which insist that you can only get a book deal if you have mysterious connections in the publishing business; and how it's absolutely impossible for new writers to get published at all.

The logic of these arguments is fundamentally flawed, and they're just not true; but how to convince people of that? It must sound so very reasonable if you're an unpublished writer floundering around in the wasteland of the slush-pile, or drowning in a sea of rejections. I can waffle on all I like about the alchemical mix of talent, market awareness, persistence and luck which it takes to get a book written and published well from this side of the publication fence; but unpublished writers don't want alchemy, they want real information, something more concrete and clear. They want a magic key which opens publishing's door for them: they want to see what transforms an unpublished writer into a published one.

Daniel Blythe, a writer who comments here regularly, has had a stroke of brilliance (again: he's good at that). He's suggested that I start to include in my blog writers' own accounts of how they got published.

So, tomorrow the first in what I hope will be a new series: Daniel Blythe will tell us how he first got published. His is a cracking story which shows just how talent, wit and hard work can make you very lucky indeed.

If you've been published and would like to contribute your own story, just email it to me (my address is over there, in the right-hand column) with "HPRW: How I Got Published" in the subject-line. I'm looking forward to reading your contributions, and will use as many of them as I can.

For Unpublished Writers Everywhere

I can understand your frustrations. I can understand your longings to be published. I can even understand you considering calling yourself "prepublished" in an ironic, post-modernist way.

But what ever you do, please don't actually do it. It's embarrassing, and will draw the attention of the Point And Laugh Brigade.

My thanks to Editorial Anonymous for making this clear.

Dashes And Ellipses

Better late than never, we are now celebrating National Punctuation Day while simultaneously giving me a chance to indulge in a couple of my favourite obsessions: nitpicking, and dashes (and don't get me started on semicolons or we'll have to extend the event to last all week). This post first appeared on my other blog, The Self-Publishing Review, which is why it already has a few comments attached to it.


Somewhere in one of my comments, Sally has asked me for some more information about dashes and ellipses. Do, therefore, please blame her for the following rather boring post.

It's difficult to give exact rules for the correct usage for either the dash or the ellipsis as much depends on house style: the most important rule to remember is to be consistent. Choose one way and stick to it throughout your work. Use a "find and replace" to locate all examples once you've finished, just to ensure your consistency. And once you've done that don't get into a lather about them, as so much depends on the editor or publisher you're working with.

For the ellipsis, the usual convention is that it has a space after, but not before, or between each individual dot; and that if one ends a sentence, then you add a full stop so you get four dots in a row, and that full stop will naturally necessitate that a capital letter follows. So we use ellipses like this in the middle of a sentence... and like this at the end.... Ellipses indicate a trailing off (for example, in speech), rather than an interruption or abrupt halt, for which you use a dash.

Some houses prefer no spaces at all on either side of their ellipses and some (although happily, these are in the minority as I think it looks awful) prefer a space either side. I'm not sure which one I think is worse.

Dashes are more tricky. House style dictates, as usual. First rule is to remember that they are NOT interchangeable with hyphens, and that you need to show the difference between dashes and hyphens, usually by using two hyphens without a space between them to indicate a dash.

Whether or not you use a space either side of your dashes, like this:

text -- text

or don't, like this:

text--text

is up to you and the dictates of your style guide. I usually default to the latter, with no spaces, as it's what is preferred by the Chicago manual, which is what most American publishers default to when they're unsure.

Then you have to consider em- and en-dashes: the en and em refers to how much room they should take up on the line. The choice here is, once again, mostly a matter of house style although strictly speaking there are specific situations when each one should be used. If I'm in any doubt I usually default to the em-dash throughout rather than the en, as it's easier to differentiate from hyphens and so leads to a clearer text.

Finally, I'd ask everyone to use as few dashes and ellipses as possible as otherwise your text is going to look like the punctuation-spider has been sick all over it. Not a pretty thing, and very distracting to the reader.

There. I just hope Sally is grateful. After all--she asked.

How Much Can Writers Get Away With?

We know that writers have to get their work as close to perfect as possible to get it published: but the fact that publishers insist on paying editors to then edit those books before they are published implies to some that books don't have to be quite as perfect as is commonly thought before they are submitted. And if that's the case, what mistakes can writers get away with when they submit their work and what can't they afford to get wrong?

1. The basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation must be there. If the odd error has sneaked into your work then you're not facing an automatic rejection; if you show a persistent-but-consistent error which is relatively easy to correct, like using a hyphen where you should use a dash, then again you're not doing yourself too much harm. But if you misspell several words on every page, you don't seem to understand the correct use of the comma, and you pepper your whole manuscript with extended ellipses then that is going to signal to an editor that your book will need a substantial amount of work to get right—and will probably lead to rejection.
2. It's always possible to strengthen something: if a character isn't quite believable a good writer can work them more deeply into their scenes; new scenes can plug holes in gappy plots; structures can be consolidated or broken down; and a swingeing edit can work wonders on a flagging story-line, increasing the pace and tightening the story. The problem comes when all of these things need a lot of attention: the book will be very time-consuming to edit and with so much in need of revision it's difficult to be sure that the book will end up publishable. Rejection is the probable result.
3. The story has to be good. There is absolutely no point at all in constructing the perfect plot around a story which no one is interested in, or a story which people find repellent. Your story has to be really good, not just good enough.
4. If you have a good story and have perfected the structure, plot and characterisation, you still cannot guarantee that you have written a publishable book. What you also really have to have is a good voice—a unique, engaging and enticing voice. And this is the one thing that you have to get completely right if you want to be published because it's the one thing a good editor cannot help you with. It infuses every page of your manuscript and informs everything that you write. The stronger your voice, the more leeway you will be allowed with the rest of the book, and the more likely you are to get published regardless of what errors might lurk in your texts.

Trios: Beachcombing, by Maggie Dana: What Editors Want

Maggie Dana began this particular trio of articles with an account of her potholed path to publication; then Will Atkins, her editor took over and discussed Macmillan New Writing. This time Will considers the role of the author in the publication process, and nails down what authors can do to imrpove their chances of success.


Beachcombing was recommended to us by another of our authors, who was in a writing group with Maggie (‘recommendations’ sometimes make the heart sink, but in this case it was clear from the first page that Maggie was a real talent). Part of the fun of MNW is that we publish across all fiction genres—crime, thrillers, literary fiction, comic fiction, fantasy, historical, etc, etc—and so our criteria for publication are pretty simple: do we love it, can we sell it and does the author have a future? If the answer is yes, yes and yes, then we publish it. Beachcombing is a novel that fits rather neatly into its given genre (broadly: commercial women’s fiction; or ‘hen-lit,’ as Maggie calls it) and is, to abuse a cliché, a perfect beach read—as the title and cover suggest. But sitting neatly in an established genre isn’t, of course, enough to guarantee sales.

Beachcombing was MNW’s first paperback original—nobody wants to lug a jacketed hardback onto the beach, do they? It’s also worth mentioning that the publication date isn’t accidental—it’s a summer read. This enabled our sales team to present it to their key accounts—Waterstone’s, Borders, WHSmith, etc—as a straightforward commercial proposition: loveable book; nice, sunny cover; June publication date. There are now heaps of copies in the shops and, happily, it’s well represented at UK airports and rail stations, just as the summer season gets going. We’re fortunate that Maggie has energetically embraced digital marketing and self-promotion (she even Twitters, heaven help her); she’s made herself available for a fortnight’s worth of readings, interviews, signings and launches during her visit to the UK, and has also proved herself to be an energetic advocate and supporter of budding authors—of all ages—seeking publication (she spoke inspiringly on this subject at the Writer’s Handbook Live event recently).

What we are always looking for is an author whose writing ticks all the boxes: who can create engaging characters and settings; construct plausible and satisfying plots; write with fluency, grace and style. Plenty of the submissions we receive at MNW tick one of those boxes, or two—very few tick them all. We’re also looking for authors who are unafraid to get their hands dirty, who know their value as writers but understand the collaborative aspect I’ve mentioned; and who’re able to weather the knock-backs and dead-ends and ‘potholes’ that Maggie mentioned in her blog, alongside the highs. Above all, we’re looking for writers with a future—who can cast their spell once to capture readers’ loyalty, and then keep casting it, again and again. It’s the reserves of dedication, talent and sheer energy that all this requires that makes truly successful and lasting authors so rare.

Guest Post: Believe In Yourself, But Believe In The Evidence As Well

This post is part of my very occasional series about logic and research: my thanks to Dan Holloway for writing it. In a very clever twist of scheduling (nothing to do with me, honest), his excellent follow-up piece to this appeared on his own blog a couple of days ago. Dan's book, Songs From The Other Side Of The Wall, is available from the Year Zero Writers' website.

“If you work hard enough at it, you’ll succeed.” It’s the mantra of motivational coaches everywhere. Mr(s) Motivator will follow up with numerous citations of people who made conquering the unconquerable their life’s work. The actor who auditioned for a thousand parts before landing their first call back. The inventor who patented a thousand useless ideas before hitting the one that netted her fortune. The writer who received a hundred rejections before someone spotted the bestseller.... It’s one of the most frequent quotes of the day. And it’s one of the most toxic examples of false logic there is.

It sounds so reasonable. But if I put the exact same argument in the following terms, you’d say I was nuts. “All humans are under ten feet tall. Mabel is under ten feet tall. Therefore Mabel is human.” Which of course, she isn’t. She’s the cow who lives in the field next door to me.

So how are these the same? Well, it IS true that if you are human you will be under ten feet tall. Likewise, barring a minority that is infinitely smaller than the tabloid cynics would have you believe, those who break through have worked hard to get there. But just as it’s true that being under ten feet tall doesn’t make you human, so it’s true that working hard doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. In logic it’s called the law of symmetry. Two properties are symmetrical if having either of them means you always have the other (a implies b, and b implies a). Take “three-sided shape” and “internal angles add up to 180 degrees”. These properties are symmetrical because all three-sided shapes have internal angles that add up to 180 degrees and vice versa. “Under ten feet tall” and “human” aren’t symmetrical. Nor are “successful” and “hard-working”. To put it at the most basic level, in both cases there’s many more of one than t’other.

So why does the “try hard” mantra sound so plausible? Because we want to believe it. If it were simply about hard work, we could all achieve our goal – because we’re all capable of hard work. What the guru’s doing is little more than preying on your dreams. It sounds plausible because you SO want it to be true. But it ain’t! And have you noticed how often “Just a little bit harder” is followed by “And I can help with that extra mile for just £...”?

That’s not the only thing that’s so unsavoury about this bad logic. Think for a minute what it implies. It’s amazing how few people realise the implication. But it’s there as plain as the slathering of ketchup on my fry-up. “I you work hard you will succeed” implies. “If you haven’t succeeded, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough.” That’s not bad logic, by the way. In other words, if you haven’t made it, it’s somehow your fault. Well, sometimes maybe it is. But sometimes maybe it isn’t! I will never, repeat never, be an England rugby player. And if I’d started playing age two and trained every day since then with the best coaches and the best nutritionists and the best I don’t know what, I would still never make it beyond the local Sunday afternooners.

Which leads me to the last point I want to make. It is so important to learn when to draw a line. If you have one thousand rejections, it may well be that the one thousand and first will be successful. But it’s much more likely, as Sir Alan tends to say to the candidates in the boardroom for the seventh time, that “someone up there’s trying to tell you something.” Which doesn’t mean you should give up the writing you love. But it probably DOES mean don’t give up the day job.

I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t work hard. That would be bad logic on my part, because with these asymmetrical relations, the opposite of the false statement IS true. By which I mean, whilst it’s false to say “if you’re under ten feet tall you’re human” it’s true to say “if you’re over ten feet tall you’re not human”; and whilst “if you work hard you’ll succeed” is false “if you don’t work hard you won’t succeed” is true. Unless you’re the one in a million exception; but whilst I’ve read enough of “The Black Swan” to know never to rule that out, I don’t really think a “how to” book on being the exception is of much beyond curiosity value.

To sum up. Work hard. Work very hard (most of all, work smart, but that’s another post). But that’s no guarantee of success: you have to know when to call it quits. When I decided in January 2008 I wanted to make a living as a writer, I did my research and I did some soul-searching, and I drew up a five-year plan (not to have given up the day job by then, but to have given up one day a week, which for me is the tipping point: at the moment I have a pretty good idea that making it will follow on (again, that’s another post). I revise it at least every two months (without ever revising the end date) to make sure I’m not missing a trick, and to see what I can learn from what’s going to plan and what isn’t, so I can work smarter. I hope, once five years are up, if I haven’t hit my target I’ll take my own advice. Which isn’t to say I’ll stop writing. I’ll never stop writing – and as long as there’s an internet or whatever comes next I won’t stop sharing what I write. But I’ll owe it to my wife as much as myself to realise if I’m going to find a way out of the day job, it probably won’t be writing.

Reviewers Wanted!

Last night on Twitter's Litchat several people asked if there were any software programs which could help writers work and while I suspect that most are no more than expensive procrastination tools, I bet that there are a few which are useful.

The thing is, I just don't know which ones they are. I'm relatively non-technical: I write most of my work by hand, using a real pen and real paper, and then I "type" up my work into Microsoft Word using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and a couple of associated gadgets which I've reviewed here, but I don't use anything else to produce my work.

So if you use any specialist writing software, hardware or gadgets, then I'd be grateful if you'd consider writing a review of it for me, listing its good points along with its bad, and explaining just who you think might benefit from using it. Email your review to me at "HPRW at tesco dot net", and put "HPRW review" in the subject-line so I don't mistake you for spam (and while we're at it, I would welcome some more reviews of writing-related books if anyone feels so inclined).

The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction

My thanks to Jacky Taylor for this review.

'A successful flash enchants us, each small story successfully rendered engulfing us for a brief moment... in its own brand of light, or truth.' So says Tara Masih in her informative and engaging introduction to the Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, published by the Rose Metal Press.

Flash fiction is a burgeoning form in this twenty first century, and Masih informs us that it has actually been around much longer than most people think – since the early part of the nineteenth when Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe were amongst its earliest proponents.

Now, in this age of compression, where all aspects of life are crammed ever more cheek by jowl, the flash seems the ideal bite-size fiction to savour in those increasingly brief moments we have to ourselves. So it follows that as the flash itself garners more attention, with a high online profile and a growing number of writers engaging in the form, the inevitable 'How To Do It' books should start pouring from the publishers.

There are many writing guides brought in on the wave of creative writing courses steadily multiplying across the globe. There are good ones and bad ones: the Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction is definitely a good one; I would even say a very good one. It doesn't promise unparalleled success or anything else it can't deliver, but does provide real insight into how writers work in this medium doing by exactly what it says on the cover – providing guidance that gently leads the would-be flash writer along the path to making their own work truly shine.

Collectively, the twenty five essays contained here explore the different facets of writing good flash fiction and such a prismatic approach reveals much of the art to writing the very best of them. The authors, many distinguished and multi-award winners amongst them, are all actively engaged in the form as either writers, teachers or editors – some in all three – and precisely because of this experience, they don't mess around but go straight to the heart of what they want to say. Each focuses on an aspect of either writing, teaching or editing flash fiction and, as forceful advocates of the form, what they convey is frequently eloquent, often illuminating, always passionate.

The book covers ten main areas ranging from 'In Defense of the Exercise', through others such as 'Beginnings and Endings' and 'Taking Risks' to 'A Call to Action'. Each of these is further defined by the essays themselves with inevitable titles like Expose Yourself to Flash and Flash in the Pan, but don't let that put you off: under the puns you'll find some incisive, educative writing.

Many sections are inspiring and with the added bonus of both top-notch examples of the form, and exercises to get the creative juices flowing, this makes the volume an invaluable addition to any writer's reference collection. A couple of the contributors do get a little caught up in their own philosophising but are no less interesting for that, and there are some truly inspiring pieces to get fingers flashing across keyboards and pens moving in hot little hands.

It seems churlish to single out specific authors from the pack when so much of the writing here is good, but both Jennifer Pieroni and Vanessa Gebbie deserve a special mention for getting me to briefly abandon this review, in order to go and write a new flash myself! I really can't think of a better recommendation than that.

Jacky Taylor is an Arts Education professional and lives in Portsmouth. She has worked as a teacher, lecturer, community arts practitioner, arts administrator and welfare rights advisor. The first three pages of her novel won second prize at the Winchester Writers' Conference; she has now written the other two hundred and ninety five pages of it, and has just started submitting her work.

Snowbooks On Tour

Snowbooks has sent five of its authors off on a blog tour and today they visit How Publishing Really Works.


Paula Brackston runs creative writing classes and workshops, is a script reader for a film company, and sells short stories. She lives half way up a Brecon Beacon with her partner and their two children, and is the author of The Book of Shadows, and the forthcoming Nutters and Lamp Black, Wolf Grey.

Andrew Sanger is an award-winning freelance journalist and travel writer. He has also written some thirty travel guides, and his novel The J-Word is published by Snowbooks.

Thomas Emson has been a singer-songwriter, an author, and a journalist. He lives in Kent with a wonderful woman, an elderly cat, and two house rabbits. His debut, Maneater, became a bestseller as did his second novel, Skarlet. He is writing numerous further books for Snowbooks.

Alastair Sim has published stories and playscripts in magazines, anthologies and on the web. The Unbelievers is one of two books which he wrote while on the University of Glasgow's prestigious MPhil Creative Writing course.

Fiona Robyn writes to help herself and other people to pay attention, and because she loves to. She writes a daily blog, a blog about being a writer, and has an excellent collaborative blog. She lives happily in rural Hampshire in the UK with her partner, her cats Silver and Fatty, and her vegetable patch. Her three novels, The Letters, The Blue Handbag and Thaw are all published this year.


Jane: How long did it take you to get published, and how many books did you write in that time?

Alastair: I've written three books, two of which have been published. Of the two published, it took just over two years for each of them to get from what I regarded as a market-ready manuscript to publication.

Andrew: It's worth mentioning first of all that I had had about 30 travel books published already before I wrote The J-Word. After what I'd heard about dealing with fiction publishers, I felt that I couldn't be bothered with them at all! So I planned to publish The J-Word myself, and was all set to go. But I was tempted to send the book to just one small publisher, because I really liked the look of them—it was Snowbooks. As you see, they wrote back that they wanted to publish The J-Word.

Fiona: I've written two books of poetry, one 'self help' book (A Year of Questions: How to Slow Down and Fall in Love with Life) and three novels. I published the first three myself and then Snowbooks said yes to all three of my novels, six years after I'd started to write the first one.

Paula: My non-fiction has been published since 1999, when I wrote a travel book, The Dragon's Trail about my month-long horse trek around Wales. I then started having pieces included in anthologies, and sold my short stories to magazines. But, from first page of first novel to publication of first novel (not the same book!) was nine years. I need to say that again. Nine years. In that time I wrote four novels and two screenplays.

Thomas: My first book was published in 1996 in the Welsh language. It was the first novel I wrote, but the second book—the first was a collection of short stories, which the publisher didn't want. But they asked me if I had a novel. I sort of did—half a novel, really. But I said yes. I quickly finished it, and they liked it. I've been lucky ever since with publishing - in Welsh and English.


Jane: What do you think you changed in order to get published, and how? Your writing, your editing, your attitude, or anything else?

Alastair: I've been lucky that my 2nd published book, Victorian detective novel of ideas 'The Unbelievers' found a very good publisher in Snowbooks (the first, 'Rosslyn Blood', ended up with an unprestigious American publisher who didn't market it). 'Unbelievers' found a better publisher because it's a better book—it reflects the intensive editing and peer-review input of having been developed when I was studying for an MPhil in creative writing, on the University of Glasgow course which has produced over fifty published novels and one Booker shortlisting.

Andrew: I think the real answer to 'What did I change?' is that I became willing to focus on the reader's point of view rather than my own.

Fiona: This might be controversial, but all that changed was my luck. I somehow felt more 'ready' to be published too, so maybe I was sending out different vibes. I do think it's vital that we constantly strive to improve our work, but I'm not convinced that there's always a direct correlation between how 'good' you are and how likely you are to get published.

Paula: During those long pre-published years I did an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, which was sort of a statement of intent: 'I am a writer' kind of thing. I also had my two babies, and I do think that boosted my creativity. More practically, after all those hundreds of thousands of words it is just possible my writing got better.

Thomas: I didn't change anything, really. I've certainly learned with every book. Learned to be a better writer, hopefully. I've been a journalist for more than 20 years, so I'd been in the publishing world, if you like—I knew all about deadlines and getting the job done and working with other people—which you have to do even in a solitary job such as writing


Jane: What was the low point of your search for publication? A story involving humiliation or mortification would be good here!

Alastair: An agent I was keen to work with turned down 'Rosslyn Blood' because she 'couldn't see a market for a contemporary thriller around Knights Templar and the secrets of Rosslyn Chapel'. This was just months before 'The Da Vinci Code' came out....

Andrew: To be honest, I have been lucky. My problem is not with publishers but with agents. I still haven't got an agent and don't know how to get one.

Fiona: Searching for publication is a constant cycle of reaching out and disappointment, followed by a period of recovery. Depending on the disappointment, recovery can take five minutes or five months. I have got better at handling rejection, and this is a vital skill if you want to be a writer. I think we can be harder on ourselves than any publisher could possibly be.

Paula: Low point, you say? Hmm. Which to choose.… Having an agent who failed (in two years) to place any of my work? Being shortlisted for a crime-writing prize (which included publication) but not getting it? Maxing out all my credit cards with no sniff of a publishing contract? Fortunately, all these painful moments fade faster than a British suntan once you get your first book published.

Thomas: Oh dear! I don't have one, I'm afraid. I've been very, very lucky. When I decided to give up full-time work and focus on writing three years ago I did have low moments, thinking: This is never going to come off. Not because my work was being rejected, but because I was aware how difficult it was to get published. But I've got a wonderfully inspiring wife. And she, along with a dose of good luck, got me through.


Jane: What has been the high point of publication so far? And has it changed the way you see your writing career?

Alastair: Seeing 'The Unbelievers' face-out on the shelves at Waterstones, beside writers whom I admire and respect like C J Sansom. It confers a reality on the business of being a writer.

Andrew: The experience of seeing The J-Word in print, seeing people reading it, hearing people discuss it, was intoxicating, a dream come true. It has been exhilarating ever since. Having a novel published has totally transformed my view of my future. Above all, I feel that it's really worth plugging away at the new novel I am writing.

Fiona: Holding my first novel 'The Letters' in my hand, and seeing it in Borders with all the other real life books! And I'm always very happy to hear from satisfied readers. I have changed my ambitions since becoming published. I used to think I wanted glitzy awards and critical acclaim. I realise now that what I'd like more than anything is for 'ordinary readers' (whatever that means) to love my characters and to learn something about themselves from my books.

Paula: Holding my first copy of Book of Shadows in my hands for the first time. Seeing it on the shelves in Waterstone's. Watching its ratings go up (and down, and up!) on Amazon. Doing book-signing events. Finding my son's 'book' that he is now writing (aged 8) to be like Mummy. Giving my daughter (aged 6) a copy to take to school for Show and Tell. Shall I stop now?

Thomas: When Snowbooks said they wanted to publish Maneater. My first English-language novel. It gave me the confidence to think I could do this as a career. They keep publishing my books and keep making me feel very confident about my stories and my writing.


Jane: What single piece of advice would you give to new writers who are aiming at publication?

Alastair: You've got to combine a bizarre level of self-belief with a willingness to learn and revise, and revise again. Everyone else thinks you're a fantasist for wanting to be a writer—it's up to you to put the effort in which will prove them wrong.

Andrew: Picture a complete stranger reading your book, eagerly turning the pages.

Fiona: Be kind to yourself, and keep on going.

Paula: Don't give up!

Thomas: Write something. Finish something. So many people I speak to say they want to be a writer, but they can't find the time or can't think up a story. Well, without having something written, finished, you've got no chance. Once you've got a completed novel, you've got a chance then. You might need a bit of luck, maybe, getting someone to read it and then like it. But at least you've got something people might read—and like.


My thanks to all five writers for taking part, and to Emma Barnes of Snowbooks for sending them in my direction in the first place (and I do hope you’ve all remembered to subscribe to White Magazine, which is turning out to be a very good thing indeed).

The Author's Big Mistake

I thought that this novice writer's reaction to a poor review was bad. But last week Alice Hoffman claimed the prize for The Worst Ever Reaction To An Unfavourable Book Review by posting the reviewer's email address and phone number onto Twitter and encouraging her fans to harass the reviewer concerned.

In Hoffman's favour she has now apologised, and her Twitter account has been deleted: but I'm amazed that she saw fit to put someone else's personal information up on the internet in order to get others to make contact. It's an appalling thing to have done.

I loved Hoffman's book Blackbird House, and I've enjoyed a good few of her other titles, too. But as a direct result of this, I will not be buying any more of Alice Hoffman's books.

You can read a good account of this at the wonderful Galleycat; Gawker mopped into all the corners with screenshots of all of her terrible Tweets; The Book Maven told the story and added some more background about a previous Hoffman overreaction. You can read what Lynn Price (of Behler Publications) has to say about it here; Editorial Ass has picked up the story, too; AuthorScoop mentioned it; and (inevitably) it's now being discussed at Absolute Write.

In an attempt to be fair, I have to point out that Alice Hoffman isn't the only writer to spew her objections to a bad review onto the internet. Anne Rice introduced her new and exciting paragraph-free style when she objected to an Amazon review of one of her books, while Laurell K Hamilton took us Christmas shopping for her characters and along the way revealed how much work her editors have to do.

This kind of reaction to a review has been called The Author's Big Mistake for a very good reason: it can't change the review, and the results are going to hang around for an awfully long time (as is shown by the links I've given above). If an author is determined to respond to a bad review but would like to keep some dignity intact, then the only possible course of action is to thank the reviewer for his or her time, and hope that they like the next book better. It's possible to do this with grace and style, as was ably demonstrated when I reviewed a book called We'll Always Be Pals on my other blog, The Self-Publishing Review. I wasn't terribly keen on the book but its author, Tom McManus, left a few very gracious comments, including this:

It's all good Jane, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and you have yours. I am not hurt by it. As you know, when you put something out there like a book, you take the good and the not so good in stride.

I just wish that Alice Hoffman had spoken with Mr McManus before she visted Twitter. She could have learned a lot.

But the last word here must go to John Scalzi, who has written an excellent analysis of The Author's Big Mistake. Some people are indeed crazy screechy monkeys, and some writers are asstards.


Edited to add some more linky heaven:

Thanks to Daniel Blythe, here's another writer reacting to a poor review. She's switched off the comments to her blog so there are no reactions there: we'll just have to make up for that here.

Pub Rants has now blogged about it too.

These ones come courtesy of AuthorScoop:

When Richard Ford shot Alice Hoffman's book: "it's not like I shot her." That's OK then.

There are some scary stories about more writers who have overreacted to bad reviews at The Salon.

And here Alain de Botton reacts to a very negative review. I've not read the book, but I am backing slowly away: here it's the reviewer who scares me the most.

Applying For Arts Council Funding

My thanks to Daniel Blythe for this piece.



I've applied for four Arts Council England grants in my life—three between 2000-2005 for community-based arts projects (two successful, one not) and one in 2008 for my own writing development (successful).

1. Read everything you can about Arts Council grants on their website.

2. You don't have to be a published writer. What you do need to do is to demonstrate that the project you are undertaking is a "literary" contribution and that it represents a turning-point in your career—that completing this work will enhance your artistic career and take it off in an interesting direction. In my case it was my first novel for children after fifteen years of writing for adults. In the case of a friend who was also awarded a grant, it was his first full poetry collection, for which he already had an offer to publish.

3. Give your local Arts Council office a call and talk through your idea for a project with one of the development workers. They want to help you and should be able to tell you if it sounds viable or not.

4. If they sound at all enthusiastic about it, then go to the "funding" page at the Arts Council website and download their application form and notes.

5. Be absolutely sure you know what the budget for your project is going to be. If this is going to be a book or script you are working on at home, this will include things like what proportion of utility bills you will be using, your stationery costs, etc.

6. You need to find 10% of the cost yourself, and be very clear where this is coming from. I funded mine through my private work teaching and critiquing manuscripts.

7. At some stage, talk to someone else who has done an Arts Council grant application. I found it very valuable to speak to another published writer who had just received notification that his application was successful. He let me look at his application and supporting statement so I could see an example of something which had got the nod.

8. If you want a quick response, go for one of the smaller grants (less than £5,000), as they turn those around within three months. A larger one (£5,000 and over) will take six months.

9. One tricky thing on the application is the question of the numbers of artists, participants and audience. This is easy-ish to answer if you are putting on a play or a community writing project. It's not so easy if you are writing a book and don't even have an offer to publish yet, let alone any idea of the print-run. If you've been published before, then I can only suggest working out the audience from what a reasonable print-run would be based on your previous career. If you haven't, then I'd suggest asking a published writer or the Society of Authors for advice.

10. Sometimes, the Arts Council will come back after the application is in and ask you for more information on your project outside the boundaries of the application form—this is usually a good sign. It happened to me and I ended up writing an extra 1000 words on the project. I was grateful for this opportunity—I thought it could only be a good thing, and I was right.

11. You are more likely to get the award if you seem professional, focused and on top of your material. Woolly, vague applications are no good. Also be able to say exactly how long it will take you and how you will evaluate it at the end.

12. If you are successful, you may be asked to do some publicity. I've not been asked to do an awful lot. I was featured in some local newspaper articles and I have been happy to put an Arts Council Funded logo and link on my website. I wasn't asked to do the latter, but it just seemed polite. And of course I will mention the grant in the Author's Note at the start of the book, if and when it is published.

Reader's Reports

When an agent or an editor requests a reader's report on a manuscript which has been submitted to them, they'll usually send those reports onto the writer once they've made a decision about the manuscript concerned, whatever that decision is—and whatever the reader has reported.

Reader's reports often contain some strong criticism and discuss the manuscript in very frank terms, and if you're not able to deal well with constructive criticism they can be very painful to read. But if you're keen to make your work the best it can possibly be, and can overcome the initial disappointment and hurt that you might feel, these reports can be extremely helpful: they focus closely on a manuscript's flaws and so make very clear how it could be improved.

Reader's reports are very valuable tools for a writer who is serious about improving his craft, but agents and editors only ever request reader's reports on a tiny proportion of submissions: the ones which show real promise. And as most submissions are rejected a long way before a reader’s report is even considered, relatively few writers will ever get to see one.

Trios: Diary Of An On-Call Girl, By PC Bloggs: From Blog To Book

This is the final piece in the Trios series about Diary of an On-Call Girl: True Stories from the Front Line, the memoirs of an anonymous police officer, P. C. Bloggs. A couple of weeks ago Dan Collins, the publisher at Monday Books, discussed TV options and rights sales; last week, he looked at the importance of the right title and cover design. This final article, by P. C. Bloggs, considers the problems of writing an anonymous blog and book while still working full-time as a police officer.

P. C. Bloggs is going to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour this morning, and her book is going to be serialised on the same programme all week. You can listen to the serialisation between 10.45 and 11am each morning, Monday to Friday, and there will be a repeat each day at 7.45pm so there's no reason for you to miss it!


If there are people who join the police in order to publish a book, there must be easier ways. I didn’t become a police officer in order to get published, and nor was that why I started my blog—a therapeutic but initially light-hearted diatribe against the foibles of my work.

So when I was approached by a publisher within three weeks of my opening post I went with it, but was inwardly sceptical.

Having grown up on a diet of classic fiction, the concept of a “blook” was alien to me. But I had a lot to say about the police, and I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh, so there didn’t seem any harm in combining the two if someone was interested enough to print it.

Actually sitting down and writing it, as well as doing some publicity, and keeping myself anonymous, was another matter. At times I felt like I had two full-time jobs, and two completely separate personalities that did not overlap in any way.

There were frustrations—as a secret public sector blogger you try to reflect up-to-the-minute facts about your job, but you can’t use real life examples that are too recent in case you inadvertently identify someone. But as an author who purports to tell the exact truth, nothing but real life will do, and yet it has to be woven into some kind of coherent story.

The two skills are completely different, and keeping both going has been intellectually exhausting. I do feel, however, that I’ve clung to the principles on which I started: that the book would be true to life, true to the blog, and ultimately none of it would be taken too seriously. The whole thing has to some extent been tinged with disbelief: I didn't actually believe that the book was being published until my mother ordered it on Amazon and it arrived!

I’ve enjoyed my small successes, the opportunity to appear on radio and television, and write for broadsheet newspapers, and the fact that I have an online audience for the frustrations I can’t air at work.

But whilst writing has become a more-than-hobby, a commitment, and a passion, my job—my vocation—is as a police officer. If the two became mutually exclusive, the writing would go. Of course, the decision may not be mine: I serve two different audiences, both brutally honest about how they receive my efforts.

If one day, one or other of them tires of me, I will still look back at these years with incredulous pleasure that they lasted as long as they did.



Thanks to Monday Books' generosity we have three free copies of Diary Of An On-Call Girl to give away. If you'd like one for yourself you have to answer this question: what is PC Bloggs' day job? Email your answer to Dan at "dancollins at mondaybooks dot com" along with your address, and next Monday he'll pick three names at random to send those copies off to. It would be much appreciated if you reviewed them in a couple of places once you've read them and if you do, remember to post a link to your review here.

Problems With Logic

No matter where I look on the internet lately, I find people making complete arses of themselves.

I recently reviewed a book in which the writer had based his entire premise on a data-set which didn't actually prove his hypothesis. Instead of wondering if the lack of supporting data indicated that his hypothesis might be flawed he worked with the 25% of the records which did support it and ignored the rest. Now, I can see the problem here; you can see the problem here... poor bloke. A whole book.

YouWriteOn's ill-advised publishing scheme provided several excellent examples of odd logic with (among other things) its insistence that all rights would be returned if the writers chose to cancel. It was kind of them to make this offer: but it’s nonsensical, because you can’t do the same thing more than once and consider it a first time each time; so they couldn’t return first rights to any of the books that they published no matter what they promised.

The discussion which followed this blog post over at the Guardian relied very heavily on sweeping generalisations, opinion presented as fact, and assumptions based on untested or pick-and-mix data; and it spilled over in a little way to a post on this blog, where a well-meaning self-published writer tried to support her argument with facts that didn't actually prove what she thought they did.

I could go on: I have hundreds more examples, but I think you've got my point.

I am so tired of watching these lapses ooze across the internet that I have decided to write the occasional post here about logic, fallacies, and proper research.

What has this got to do a with publishing? A whole lot. When a writer relies on fallacies to make his point, and cannot support his assertions with solid research, he not only makes himself look foolish: he ensures he’ll never get his work published by any reputable press.

Guest Post: Voicing Concerns, by Dan Holloway

I've been wrestling with a couple of blog posts about voice: what it is, why it's important, and how to get a good one: and along comes the lovely Dan Holloway with this great post, especially for my blog's first birthday. Thank you Dan.


One of the commonest causes of “hands raised in horror” syndrome amongst members of the website Authonomy, is Harper Collins’ (who run the site) failure to publish any of the “beautifully-written” books that reach the site’s upper echelons (the Editor’s Desk). Yet, in the site’s forums, respected literary professionals endlessly repeat (and whenever I ask an “insider” the question, I get the same answer), what the industry looks for above anything else is “a fresh, original voice”.

It occurred to me that the continued prevalence of HRIH syndrome may actually be attributable to the belief that “beautifully written” – or its qualitative synonyms “tightly-plotted”, “exquisitely dialogued”, “masterfully characterised” – MEANS “fresh and original.” It doesn’t.

Let me explain.

After spending too many years studying there (10 – don’t ask), I spent a few more preparing students for Oxford interviews. It’s an infuriating truism that what Oxford looks for in would-be students is indefinable “but you know it when you see it.” I always thought “voice” was the same.

Which is why I was surprised to find it isn’t. I made the discovery whilst at a gig in Southampton a couple of weeks ago (we’d made the considerable journey to see our favourite band, The Boxer Rebellion). My regular readers will be rolling their collective eyeballs (“when he talks about marketing, it’s all music”, “social media and publishing – more music”, “even on sentence construction – it’s arpeggio this and cadenza that”), but music really is the perfect illustration of “voice.”

I’ve been to a good fistful of gigs in recent months. One of the delights of gigs (serendipity being my favourite word) is going to see a headline act and discovering some wonderful support bands (I met my Facebook novel’s “house band”, InLight, that way). It’s always interested me the way the first band comes on and the crowd thinks “great.” Enter main support and it’s “wahey, they’re fantastic!” But then the headline act comes on and everyone else vanishes.

Listening to the opening drums of The Boxer Rebellion’s “walk-on” number, Flashing Red Light Means Go, I realised why that was – and why it explained “voice.”

I’ve seen (checks his website to count links…) lots of support bands this year. They all perform excellently. The songwriting is uniformly exceptional. The frontmen have real charisma. But when you hear one song, then a second, you realise if you heard a third song, in a different context, you’d have a hard time saying whose it was. Any number of people could have written them.

On the other hand, every headline act I’ve seen writes songs that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. Within a bar (a note, even – just the tuning of their guitars is often enough; or if you prefer your music older and more German, think “Tristan chord”) you know exactly whose music you’re listening to.

And that, in a nutshell, is voice.

How do you write voice? Don’t ask me. I don’t have an original voice. Just a loud one.


Dan Holloway is a theologian by training. These days he pushes pens by day and writes by night. Author of several published short stories and two as yet unpublished novels, Dan writes literary fiction about life in modern Europe. Also an academic writer and presenter, on June 12 he will be speaking on "The Ghost at my Shoulder: Literary Reflections on Coming of Age in Post-Communist Hungary" at a conference hosted by the University of East London to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dan is writing his current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's shoes, interactively on Facebook. He blogs regularly on literary futurology, is co-founder of the avant-garde collective Year Zero Writers, and is widely rumoured to have invented both time travel machines and bionic fingers in order to accommdate his schedule.