August 28th, 2010
A couple of years ago on a writer’s website I met an assortment of people from a wide variety of backgrounds - journalism, law, PR, mothering, teaching, writing, editing - and locations such as Penzance, London, Dubai, Sydney, Washington, Mobile Al., Melbourne, St Louis and Oxford. We are all fiction writers and have become friends and supporters of each other’s writing endeavours, as well as exchanging martini recipes, debating the future of publishing (doesn’t everybody?) and blathering on about nothing in particular just because we can. One of these friends, Michelle Witte, a YA writer living in Utah declared to us one day not so long ago that she was going to open a bookshop. Despite the online writing world declaring paper books dead and the e-reader dancing and shimmying on the freshly dug grave, Michelle has opened her bookshop - Fire Petal Books - and talks to me about this new venture.
Opening a bookshop in this age of publishing uncertainty and the arrival of ebooks is an interesting move. What made you decide to open a bookshop in 2010?
There’s never a perfect opportunity to take a risk, but a good business plan combined with a visible need can make for a very successful endeavor.
As for e-books, it’s not going to immediately affect children’s and young adult books. Kids need pages to touch and turn and yes, even rip. They need something tactile as they learn to control their growing minds and bodies. As they get older, there’s still a need to hold a book, even for the kids already addicted to cell phones and iPods. E-books have just not had any influence in the kids market. That may change, but Fire Petal will be ready to adjust as readers change and grow.
The last thing people should do is fear the impending future. It’s already here and things are changing. Ignore the desire to bemoan the loss of “good old days” and see how you can thrive even more in a changing world. If you don’t, someone else will.
How did you go about getting money to do this?
I’m still trying to figure that part out. Oh, wait. You probably mean the auction. Well, I know an children’s book editor at HarperCollins in New York who suggested I hold an online auction, similar to what other people in the kid lit community had done recently to raise money for charities and other causes. She then offered to donate a manuscript critique.
I, of course, jumped at the offer, and so started my search for items to auction off. I ended up with an incredible list of donations from authors, editors, and agents, which ended up bringing in a total of $5,000. That money became the seed fund, which purchased painting and remodeling supplies, and put a downpayment on the store space. Without that, I doubt the store wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
Since I’m single without a house, still paying off my car, and no co-signer, no banks would even look at me. Well, I’m sure they did for a moment before rushing to the back to laugh their . . . erm, well you know . . . off.
What sort of bookshop is Fire Petal Books?
Fire Petal Books focuses on books for kids and teens, and all of the ages in between.
Is it a specialist bookshop for business or personal reasons?
I’ve always loved kids books, but well-meaning adults thought it best to forbid me to read them after I’d turned 12. I see that happen a lot, though maybe not as explicitly. Parents frequently come in saying their child is an advanced reader. What they really mean is that they want their child to be a genius, and that means they shouldn’t read kids books the moment they’re able to pronounce the words used in Moby Dick. Never mind that at that age a kid isn’t going to enjoy reading Moby Dick as much as he may ten years down the road when a college professor forces him to read it.
It wasn’t until I returned to college after a brief hiatus living in Montreal that I decided to re-read some of my favorite books as a child: the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. At the time, I was so incredibly busy with school and work that there was hardly a moment to relax. Since I didn’t have a tv at the time, I decided to read books that are relatively short and not mind-numbingly difficult to understand. I was already overworked; there was no way I would add to that.
So started my love affair with children’s and young adult literature. It’s progressed so far since I was a child, though there’s still a stigma that if an adult is writing for children, they’re doing it until they can “graduate” to real writing. While it’s rude for me to scream, “You’re wrong!” in their faces, I still doing it in the silence of my mind while I lovingly stock the store’s shelves with incredible works that many “adult” writers could never produce.
Oh, and business-wise, an independent bookstore is more likely to survive if it focuses on a niche—so long as that niche has a large enough audience and serves their customers’ interests. In Utah, families with 6, 7, and even 12 kids aren’t uncommon. Actually, they’re more common than families with only one or two children. So there’s definitely a market here for kids books.
Do you see value adding (workshops, readings etc) as important to bookshops?
That’s the only way they’ll really survive. In the world of WalMart-size discounts and shopping in your pajamas—or naked—online, independent bookstore have little to offer in the way of competitive pricing.
That said, the value an indie adds to the community is worth more than the $2.73 they’ll save by shopping big-box. Think about it. The last time you walked into a store like that—or even one of the chain bookstores—and asked for a book that wasn’t on the bestseller lists, had the salesperson even heard of the title you wanted? My most recent experience involved a search for Mockingjay at a price club the morning of the book release. (Don’t ask why, and I won’t tell.) Can you guess how many of the 6 or 7 employees I asked even knew what Mockingjay was? I’m pretty sure you already know.
So they offer knowledgeable staff who are actually excited to help you pick out the perfect book. They have a larger selection of books that aren’t ginormous blockbusters. And they’re interested in matching you with a book you’ll enjoy, love, adore.
Oh, and did I mention that they also bring in authors to talk with you and your kids? Or throwing ridiculously fun parties for midnight releases? Or how about educational opportunities? Though larger stores give their customers what they want in the form of convenience and low prices, I don’t know that I value a cheap book more than any of the things listed above. I really don’t know how to apply a discount to that without it completely losing value.
Location is everything in the retail world. What about your location?
Fire Petal Books is at the corner of a busy intersection, just down the street from all of those dreaded boxes. The closeness to a larger retail center offers visibility and increased shopping awareness, but the store is also far enough away that it isn’t dominated by big commerce. We’re near schools and homes, which is where we’ll find our most devoted customers.
Thanks Michelle, I’m sure the shop will be a success and I salute your energy, committment and courage with a salted caramel
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August 24th, 2010
I follow various writers’ blogs and I’m always interested to see what they are reading because they usually range over unexpected territory. In June I posted about the books I was reading or had read recently. Time to do it again.
I tried reading Elizabeth Kostova’s book The Historian but after 250 pages I had to put it down. I didn’t care enough about the characters to keep reading and I found it to be repetitious and guilty of what I was told is a major crime in novel writing – cramming in all your lovely research because you find it too interesting to leave out. leave it out, it’s a narrative traffic jam. If I was fascinated by the history and legends of Romanian vampires perhaps I would have persisted - but I’m not, so I didn’t.
I moved onto Sarah Waters’ book The Night Watch which had me right from the start. I prefer a straight narrative with no flashbacks, but I found the characters so compelling the back- to- front storytelling enhanced rather than detracted. I wanted to know more about them and finished the book with a sigh, disappointed that there was no more. I’ve bought two more of her books but have had to squirrel them away for the time being.
After the disappointment of The Historian I wanted the soothing pleasure of an old favourite so I returned to Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and took my time with it - I’d read it before. A second, slower reading always pays off and I found myself moving deeper into the story of Steven, Isabel and the soldiers in the hell of trench warfare. A humane and riveting story.
Because I’d recently read Faulks’ The Girl at the Lion D’Or I thought I may as well go for the trifecta and picked up Charlotte Grey. I was curious about how Faulks slips secondary characters from previous books into the foreground of subsequent stories. For example, Charlotte’s father was Steven’s (Birdsong) commanding officer in World War One. Hartmann, who seduces Anne in The Girl at the Lion D’Or, finds himself on the way to a concentration camp in Charlotte Grey, along with the German Jewish doctor who rescued Steven in Birdsong.
I was also reminded of the botched film of Charlotte Grey - a disappointing translation from book to film. But aren’t they all.
I moved on to contemporary Urban Fantasy with Trent Jamieson’s Death Most Definitely. I have never been interested in fantasy, science fiction or paranormal stories. But Trent is an Australian writer, the book is set in Brisbane and he’s a stablemate of mine at Hachette Australia, so I decided I would give it a go. I loved the location and the surreal goings on in the middle of a sub tropical Australian city. The inventive and imaginative aspect of the book had me turning pages, and while I’m not a convert to the genre I have to read the next two in the series to find out what happens. If you like urban fantasy it’s a great read.
I moved onto Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise because I found a very cheap copy and had been meaning to read it for awhile and still had the taste of Vichy France in my mouth.
Paul Gray in The New York Times writes -
“”Storm in June,” the first novella of “Suite Française,” opens as German artillery thunders on the outskirts of Paris and those residents who have trouble sleeping in the unusually warm weather hear the sound of an air-raid siren: “To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn’t long before its wailing filled the sky.” … With the utmost narrative economy, sharp, scattered images coalesce into an atmosphere of dread. Parisians wake up to the realization that nothing, particularly the gallant French Army they have read and heard so much about, stands between them and the Germans, and they decide, as one, to get out fast. To depict the widespread chaos that ensues — railroads hobbled by overcrowding or bombed tracks, shortages of gasoline and food — Némirovsky concentrates on a few individuals caught up in the collective panic.”
Next I picked up a book by George Makari called Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis – a very readable account of the development of new ways of thinking about inner life, an evocation of old Middle Europe and the feuding Freudians, Jungians and Kleinians who squabbled over the intricacies of their theories while seemingly oblivious to the disastrous state Germany was sliding toward. Now I’m switching between Freud and Robert Harris’s The Ghost - about a ghost writer, a politician with a nefarious past - because I need something light to switch off with after reading about the spiteful bickering and territorial spats of theorists at play.
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June 11th, 2010
I’m always curious to know what books people are reading. It’s a bit of a nosey question, like asking what they’re having for dinner that night or what brand of knickers they have on. And it also assumes that they have a book on the go, but many people who love to read don’t have the time or energy unless they are on holiday. Or they just don’t read.
I grew up in a family of readers. That’s what we did. Sport, other than walking, was something that happened on the television and made you want to turn it off. Sporty people find that bizarre. Well, maybe so, but I didn’t know any different. I didn’t go to a live sporting event until in my thirties – and then I was only shepherding a mob of little boys. I brought a book with me and sat up the back of the stand, doling out money and food on request.
This inaugural sporting event was a soccer match. I’ve stood through endless winter mornings watching schoolboys play soccer and reading a book at these matches was akin to publicly beating your child with a mallet, so in spite of my bookish ways I became fascinated with the game. So I may have to slow down my book intake once the 2010 Soccer World Cup starts, because I can’t help myself, I have to watch. Although I’ll be hunting down a copy of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch to read during half time.
But to satisfy those who ask I list below the books I’ve read over the last six weeks.
The Fatal Englishman, Sebastian Faulks
I’d be happy reading Faulk’s shopping list so when I stumbled on this in a second hand bookshop I grabbed it. “Faulk’s triple biography of three English prodigies who died young diligently sets each tragedy in its historical place and time to show how the feelings of a generation came to be projected upon their tragedy.” Brian Case, Time Out.
I enjoyed this book as I knew I would. At the front of the book snippets of reviews can be read and on the front cover David Hare of The Spectator declares the book to be “wildly exciting.” I don’t know what sort of life Mr Hare leads because although this is a fascinating read it’s not quite as exciting as he would have us believe.
The Group, Paul Solarotoff
Another fascinating non fiction book. Journalist, Paul Solotaroff writes about a New York therapist and the six people he is treating through group therapy. Sex addiction, compulsive spending, drug abuse, bullying husbands, crippling shyness – all worked through in the group, some successfully, some not. Solotaroff’s description of the group dynamics and the ultimate fate of the therapist is compelling.
Kate Atkinson, Case Histories
Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?
Yes, I’ve had a Kate Atkinson binge and I feel so much better for it. Although her propensity for killing women and children in her books gets to me sometimes.
Philip Kerr, March Violets
Philip Kerr, The Pale Criminal
Philip Kerr, A German Requiem
Philip Kerr, The One from the Other
and I’m halfway through …
Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame
These five books feature a private detective, Bernie Gunther. Gunther is a fabulous character with his hard boiled morality and hilarious, dark, tough guy humour. Kerr’s research is deep and thorough, and his recreation of the Weimar years of the German Republic, and the moral minefield of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, provide a sense of time and place so intense I wanted to get out my ration card, nylons and a ticket to Argentina.
Kerr’s Bernie Gunther books are ‘a brilliant transfer of a Chandler novel to postwar Germany. The wise guy dialogue … and the moral man making his way in an immoral world are pure Chandler. Powerful and impressive.’ The Observer.
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May 3rd, 2010
April was a hell of a month for me. Rewriting a manuscript while promoting another book has been draining. I’ve been scribbling in notebooks on planes, trains, hotel rooms, cafes, beds as well as experiencing reviews of the book for the first time, doing interviews, readings, a couple of launches and book signings, keeping the house going - sort of - and wrestling with this new world of the published author and all it’s internal and external crises.
I’ve enjoyed most of the publicity work, particularly the radio interviews and meeting booksellers at various bookshops. Aspiring writers could do no better than to go and have a chat with the managers of these bookshops to get a good feel for what people buy and why. I suspect booksellers are overlooked as a resource for unpublished writers because, apart from being busy, they don’t have a hotline to the givers of contracts. But I’ve learned so much from having a chat to both managers and staff and from looking at every detail of how books are presented to buyers in these shops.
You can look at the Nielsen Top Ten best sellers and think you’ve done your research on what readers are buying, but until you go to the coalface, you haven’t really. I’m looking forward to doing more and to having a few days break while the rewrites sit and ferment.
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February 3rd, 2010
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January 26th, 2010
In my past life in the visual arts world I noted – along with thousands of others – that any overtly female artwork, not feminist, but dealing with the business of being of the female gender, was neatly sidelined as ‘women’s art’. Some female students scrambled valiantly to get away from this label because it was the kiss of marginalisation and obscurity. But some embraced it with an enthusiasm and passion usually reserved for the beheading of aristocrats in revolutions.
Sculpture departments in art schools are full of traditional masculine technologies such as woodworking, metalwork, steel, clay and so on. During my time as a student in a sculpture department all the permanent staff were in their men in their forties, (the part timers were female). At the end of each term students would display whatever it was they were working on and the staff, and other students, would gather around for what was termed a critique.
When a female student exhibited a ‘female’ piece of work the tension became unbearable, because criticising these artworks was impossible. The male teaching staff - poor bastards - were being asked to walk through a minefield. Bristling female students held their breath as they anticipated a bloody explosion, but the male students wandered off – it didn’t concern them, it was a chick thing. And anyway, it was ‘women’s art’ – made them a bit squeamish, a bit guilty and a lot bored.
So what’s the point of this little story, I hear you ask. The point is, despite being fifty one per cent of the world’s population, representation of women and their lives is still considered a minority interest, and of lower status than the dominant masculinised culture. New York Times film critic, Manhola Dargis, talks about this problem in regards to Hollywood filmmaking. (Jezebel.com, December 14)
“There’s a reason that women go to movies like Mamma Mia. It’s a terrible movie… but women are starved for representation of themselves. … It’s a vicious cycle. We’re (women) not going to movies because there aren’t movies for us. Therefore we’re not seen as a loyal movie going audience. My point is that if there are stories about women, women will come out for that…
That’s why [women] go to a movie like The Devil Wears Prada and make huge hits. They want to see women in movies. People in the trade press constantly frame that as a surprise. This, gee whiz, Sex and the City’s a hit, Twilight, hmm, wonder what’s going on here. Maybe they should not be so surprised. In the trade press, women audiences are considered a niche. How is that even possible? We’re 51 percent of the audience.”
To generalise, women are interested in stories about relationships between people. In popular culture romance and women’s fiction are invariably focussed on relationships both within the family and beyond, how woman negotiate these relationships and how individual women find a place in our society. These books represent us to ourselves – larger than life, sure, but with a core of truth that we recognise. However these books are marginalised, and in the case of romance, trivialised and stigmatised.
A relative of mine can’t get his head around the fact that I’ve chosen to write romantic comedy. The word ‘romantic’ sticks in his throat. He just can’t understand why an overeducated, intelligent western woman would be writing such things.
And I’ll tell you why – Australian author and academic Bronwyn Parry describes romantic fiction as having four main characteristics – a concern with relationships, with the emotional arc or journey of the characters, affirming the power of love and with an optimistic ending. I’m interested in relationships, I’m interested in exploring emotions, I know happy endings don’t mirror reality but people like to be uplifted occasionally. And I do believe in the transformational power of love – not in some queasy pink Hallmark way, but as a human who has had lovers, children, partners, friends and parents, and seen love at work. Everybody is, or has been, on a journey toward intimacy with another human being – it’s not a minority experience.
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January 5th, 2010
Happy endings. They’re a problem, aren’t they?
Of course, some people rubbish the whole notion of ‘happy endings’, finding them ridiculously simplistic and perhaps evidence of the lowbrow tastes of those who loll about all day in peach coloured negligees eating soft centred chocolates and reading bodice rippers – as so many of us do.
Happy endings are said to be evidence of patriarchal brain washing, seducing innocent young females into fantasies of rescue and everlasting married bliss when they should be fantasising about their earning potential as merchant bankers or realising their inner potential by climbing Everest without oxygen and sans makeup. Marriage these days is not the neat end of the story; it’s not the one and only aim of contemporary western women as it used to be portrayed, particularly in post war popular culture.
It’s not the only aim, if it is an aim at all, because we know that in real life happy endings, where the lovers remain dreamily happy forever, just don’t happen. Lovers turn into partners – or not – and a whole truckload of interpersonal issues get dumped on their white picket fence and, if they stay together, they’ll be dealing with these issues until death or divorce part them.
The story of the courtship, not the forty-year aftermath, is what concerns your average romantic comedy writer. In popular fiction and film, the courtship is much more fun than the marriage because many deeper personality issues have yet to surface and we can enjoy the projected dreams and desires as much as the characters do. We can laugh at their bumbling and misunderstandings, recognising and laughing at ourselves all the while. But where to put that full stop? How can we end on an optimistic note at this point when we know what lies ahead of them?
Marriage, a lifelong commitment to another person is a hard road to travel, and almost half of those who attempt it fall by the wayside. Sustaining a marriage requires relationship skills, generosity, hope, forgiveness and an ability to reach deep into the self to find these things. It’s complicated, more so than most of us imagine when we sign on. Marriage can’t signify a happy ending in this era. So I’m still a bit wary of plonking a marriage at the end of my stories. But we still need resolution and we want an uplifting conclusion that will somehow temper the remorseless of reality, and what marriage does do is signify commitment, and maybe commitment is the optimistic ending we are after.
Getting married is an expression of hope, symbolizing that you will do your best when the bad times come – which they will – to keep the relationship together. So why should that commitment in itself be a happy ending? Why not make serial monogamy or multiple lovers or celibacy the gold standard of human happiness? Because a functioning, intimate and sexually exclusive relationship with a person you respect and enjoy being with – sustained until the end of life, meets so many of our human needs that it is, let’s face it, what most people, male and female, yearn for.
So when the lovers on screen or in the book finally sort out their differences and decide they want to be together, that is what we are wishing for them. Not a sugary, improbable happy ending, but the strength and good fortune to sustain the love until the end of their lives. We know the odds are long, but we close the book or leave the theatre hoping their white picket fence stays upright and only needs a few coats of paint over it’s lifetime.
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September 12th, 2009
image via bookride.com
Coming up with a book title is sometimes as hard as cutting firewood with your tongue. In fact, deciding on a title for a painting or sculpture is a jolly skip in the park compared to the book title.
With an artwork title you can come at it from any angle – descriptive, complementary, undermining, explaining or just plain keep-the-punters-guessing ‘Untitled’, (my personal favourite). The best titles, of course, have a conceptual connection to the work, however obscure. It doesn’t matter if the viewer doesn’t get it, because it’s not about them, is it? It’s about the artist and the need to remain true to the rigorous imperatives that drive them. And the viewer can just shove off and buy the catalogue if they really want to know, and even then the obfuscation level will be so high nobody knows what the hell it’s all about so lets go have a coffee.
But a title for a work of fiction? Now there’s a challenge. Whatever you come up with, if you publish commercially, the publishers have the last say. The marketing department will have a list of words that they swear will stimulate the prospective buyer to a must-have-where’s-my-credit-card frenzy. Aren’t they clever? The imperative here is money. And nobody leaves the bookshop for a coffee until they have bought something.
But I want my title to mean something. I want it to speak to the book and it themes and I want it to be neat, taut and go beyond buzz wordiness, and I’m not talking about meaning in a deep philosophical sense. My book being published next year is titled The Book of Love. Now I wasn’t a hundred per cent on that title when I was offered a contract, but I knew it wouldn’t be down to me alone. And both my publisher and myself had a problem with the word ‘love.’ Beautiful experience, but on a book cover the word shrieks of sappy sentimentalism. However the book in question is a book of reproductions of the erotica of Pompeii and the search for this book brings the protagonists together. So it’s a good fit, despite the general squeamishness around ‘love.’
I imagine marketing also have a list of reader turn-off words depending on the targeted reading demographic. And I suspect the longer the title the less likely you are to hold that roaming consumer eye. There have been overly cute, forced titles built around potato peelings and Ukrainian tractors and other dissonant imagery. And brilliant short titles of such aptness you can only pause and admire the mind that came up with them - titles such as American Tabloid, Cloudstreet, A Fringe of Leaves and dozens of others. And please feel free to fling them at this blog.
Meanwhile I scour my thesaurus, make lists of words, harass people with possible title ideas and lie in bed at three am gnawing on this title problem.
I love the ones that slip into my mind so smoothly I barely notice the entry point. But they can’t all be like that, blood must be shed and sleep must be lost until the right words are extracted and finally secured with heavy nails, and accompanying satisfied grunts, to the book cover.
image via d.sharp journal blog
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August 20th, 2009
People have asked me if I was going to do the cover for my forthcoming book, a question they ask because of my background in visual arts. Naturally my answer is no, and then the response is usually ‘isn’t that unfair given it’s your book?’
But actually it’s not my book. And it wouldn’t be a book if the publishers didn’t put their money and people behind it. It’s my manuscript, but it’s our book, a collaborative effort. The amount of person-hours going into shaping the manuscript and bringing it to publication is phenomenal. Then they advertise it and put bundles of them in trucks and drive them all over the continent and then sit back and hope they’ve picked a winner. So, yeah, they can have the cover
I have seen the cover and I’m happy with it, and I’ve seen most of the numerous ideas the designer came up with. The publishers asked what I didn’t want, and if I had burst into tears and flung their choice across the room I’m sure they would have changed it – but no way would they let me near the responsibility for designing it. (And I probably wouldn’t get another contract)
What would I come up with if I were allowed to do the cover, I wonder? My interpretation of the themes of the book, and the images that I use could be so off-putting and downright upsetting to many people. Or they might not work in the hundred different ways that a book cover has to work. And then there is a big gap between contemporary visual art practice and book cover design. The former sometimes takes a perverse pride in not selling and producing discomfort in the viewer. And we don’t want that in the bookshop - plenty of other places to go for a dose of outrage.
Book covers perplex me. Shopping for them is a very different experience to my usual shopping trips. I wander down supermarket aisles and buy by colour and format. I buy the same things usually and my brain goes for a picnic while I just reach, grab, toss, reach, grab, toss and thence to cash register. If you asked me what brands I bought I’d be hard pressed to tell you. Sometimes they change the packaging and I have to snap out of my reverie and make a decision or root around and find my normal brand of tuna. I resent that; I don’t want to think when I shop. And too many times have I not paid enough attention and arrive home with something different to what I intended.
I felt that creeping perplexity the other day in an airport bookshop. Hundreds and hundreds of covers were competing for my attention. How could I choose? I wanted to buy something so I walked up and down the aisles and sometimes I’d stop and pick up a book – not for the title but because something in the image resonated with me. Some covers shrieked at me ‘you would hate me,’ and others, particularly in the crime section said ‘if you want a ballsy read, pal, choose me, otherwise f**k off.’
Around and around I went. I felt, as my hand reached out for a book, that a character like Christof from The Truman Show was in Marketing HQ saying, ‘she’s made a decision, quiet everybody…she’s picking up the … yes, she’s picking up the purple embossed one, quick look inside her neo cortex and find which lights are flashing.’
Those marketing people would love to know how an impulse buy is made. But I can’t help them. So visually battered was I that I felt like I was in a scrum of colourful beggars all with their hands held out, whining beseechingly, ‘have pity on me, lady, I’m near the end of my six week shelf life, I’ll go into the backlists and then remainders, for god’s sake, BUY ME!’
I fell with relief on the Penguin re releases and found an old friend decked out in the modest and sober orange, black and white. I’d read this book many years ago, when it too wore a flamboyant look-at-me cover, and that day in the airport it appeared to be just the thing – there was security of satisfaction. It’s well written, a good story, a classic haven’t read for a decade. All the others – titivated up in their embossed card and luxury flaps exhausted me. I couldn’t commit, I wasn’t going to risk surrender to such a delicious seduction, because I could have opened it on the plane and realised it was just a physical thing. Too late then, isn’t it?
I prefer second hand bookshops most of the time anyway, so I suspect the marketing supremos would give me up as a dead loss. Stick to writing, honey, they’d say, and leave the rest to us. And I shall do that with pleasure.
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July 19th, 2009
Narcissus, Andrew Wodzianski
‘Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.’ Andre Gide
My imagination, my inner world, has dominated my life. It has distracted me, provided hours of entertainment, led me to art and writing, protected me and led me astray in areas where it should have played only a supporting role. Imagination is hard to be without in any creative field, but you have to wield a big stick and keep it in line, because it can pick up your life and run off with it, giggling and screeching with a sly delight.
I can be so lost in my inner world that real life is hard to get a grip on sometimes. Examining the personality issues of a character and trying to arrive at her motivation filled my mind the other day. I had chores to do but set about them mechanically as I continued to dwell in my little cocoon of fancy. I took a handful of cheques to the bank; thrilled at the amount I was depositing, and presented them to the teller. She slid one back across the counter, an amused expression on her face, and said, ‘I think you have to pay this one.’ It was a hefty bill from the taxation office. How did I miss that?
A friend once described to me how he was walking through a paddock on a hot summery day and reached down into a clump of grass for a stick only to find his hand closing around a snake. Now putting your hand in long grass during an Australian summer is a risky thing to do. But he told me he was distracted by ‘his rich inner life.’ No further explanation required – for me anyway.
I know some people find the concept of an inner world repugnant, preferring to exist in a tangible predictable world. They are content with a certain material standard of living and a minimum of emotional understanding. Uncomfortable with fiction, or film and untouched by pictures and positively antagonistic to any art pursuit that may cause unease in themselves, they cannot conceive of any other way of being. I know because I meet them all the time. I meet their impatience and their faint contempt.
And it’s true; imagination can be an unreliable and hysteric guide through this material world. It can lead you to do things that you imagine will be fantastic, whereas in truth, they will be dead ordinary or even just deadly. You can kid yourself, con yourself and rearrange all of your inner furniture to fit what will always be an illusion.
But imagination is also the humid hot house where the seeds for creative work will hopefully shoot. To be unafraid of your inner world and be able to extract what you need, to not be ashamed or overwhelmed by what you find there, is essential for the artist/writer. They have to explore the complexities and dark black shapes in the corners of the mind without snapping the lid shut in fear.
Insanity has a room in the same house. Madness, artists and writers are thought to go together like fish and chips or beer and football. But real mental disorder does not allow for creativity, it’s a barrier to any sort of creative achievement because it rarely allows for a construction of form - books, painting, sculpture, poem or whatever. Discipline, persistence, reason,critical and analytical skills, essential for any sustained venture such as writing or painting, are the first casualties of the breakout of disorder.
Narcissism is another term loosely linked with artist/writers. It’s not an uncommon association, I have to say. But a wide streak of narcissism usually prevents the creative artist from looking beyond the self. Writing disguised as therapy is unreadable after awhile, an onanistic activity with a feedback loop to the self only. A measure of empathy and interest in others, beyond the infatuated self-absorption of the narcissistic artist, is an essential ingredient. Serious creative achievements must resonate in some universal way with the viewer or reader, or at least strive for this.
Narcissus, Andrew Wodzianski
Standing back and distancing one’s self is important too. If your emotional investment is too great then sometimes the work is never completed. When this happens the risk of exposure to subsequent criticism is too great. Some writers can be working on the same manuscript for ten years or more, sabotaging its completion over and over, finding ways around because of the unthinkable consequences. Some of us write and write and write and never submit.
Writing, and most creative processes, involves managing inner tension. The tension when facing disordered symbolism is profound. There is a need to complete, to bring closure, to tighten up, but perfecting each sentence before writing it down can lead to a preciousness that is counter productive to the wholeness of the story. Keeping all the options open for months can be unbearable sometimes, but if you take it out of the oven too soon you may end up with an indigestible mess.
All these balances - imagination and self delusion, persistence and self doubt, narcissistic self absorption and curiosity about the human condition, reason and disorder - sit delicately on the scales. Those of a different mind and firmer temperament perhaps consider themselves lucky, but even though I have no choice in the matter, I consider myself, and my fellow artists and writers, to be luckier.
van Gogh, Painting Sunflowers
‘I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.
I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone.’
Vincent van Gogh
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Tags: books, creativity, imagination, madness, writing | 9 Comments
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