Words with JAM
Free, easy and a little bit sleazy - just the way you like it
August 2011 Issue
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Contents
Random stuff
Characters with Legs - author of some of the finest, funniest crime books including Boiling a Frog and Where the Bodies are Buried, Christopher Brookmyre talks about creating his characters, then making them somewhat less insufferable
60 Second Interviews with Steven Conte and Susan Jane Gilman
Book Festivals: A Preview - a look at the Lewisham and Wigtown Book Festivals
Writer’s Retreat - a look at not writing on a writing retreat with Jo Reed
Keeping up with the Janes - Austenproject on Twitter by Clair Humphries
Comics - AAAAAAArgh! Reboot Blues By Andrew Ramsay
Arseholes in Paradise - procrastinating with Perry Iles
You Couldn’t Make it Up - Danny Gillan having a good old News of the World Rant
Putting Library Closures to the Test - Catriona Troth reporting on the first in a series of judicial reviews of council decisions to close libraries
Favourites with JD Smith - you and I on our favourite characters
Here Come the Girls - Character Forming by Anne Stormont
Why Good Novels Make Great Films by Gillian Hamer
Charactershitsticks - Derek Duggan being sarcastic
Book v Film: The Crimson Petal & The White - by Gillian Hamer
The Many Lives of Alison Wonderland - an interview with Helen Smith
Celebrating London Sanctuary by Catriona Troth, the Library Cat
Writing to Live Again with Catriona Troth
Hitting the Top of the Kindle Charts - an interview with Mark Edwards
Quite Small Stories
We’re Chained - by Arike Oke
Accidents Happen - by JW Hicks
Eat Your Words - by Mary Cassells
Competitions
Comp Corner - winners of 5 copies of 22 Britannia Road, corralled by Danny Gillan
Are You Having a Laugh? Words with JAM’s comedy scene competition information
Pencilbox
The Agent’s View with Andrew Lownie and Jonny Geller
Populating the Fictional World with Sarah Bower - the second of ten creative writing exercises
Is self-editing a doddle or is editor-speak gobbledegook to you? by Helen Corner
Scripts: American Writer - first in a regular slot on scripts with Ola Zaltin
Characters in Novels: People Like Us? by Sue Carver
Synopsis Doctor is back, with Sheila Bugler
Question Corner - Lorraine Mace answers your questions on writing
Some other stuff
Dear Ed - Letters of the satirical variety
The Rumour Mill - sorting the bags of truth from the bags of shite
Horoscopes - by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith
The Team
Sarah Bower is the author of two historical novels, THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD and THE BOOK OF LOVE (published as SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA in the US). She has also published short stories in QWF, The Yellow Room, and Spiked among others. She has a creative writing MA from the University of East Anglia where she now teaches. She also teaches creative writing for the Open University. Sarah was born in Yorkshire and now lives in Suffolk.
Sheila Bugler won a place on the 2008 Apprenticeships in Fiction programme. Whilst publishers debate her first novel, she is working on her second novel and spending way too much time indulging her unhealthy interest in synopsis-writing.
Clinical psychologist Sue Carver is serving a long apprenticeship in novel-writing. Her aphorism is: it takes as long as it takes. Her first novel is set in the world of psychological therapy and her second takes her far out of her comfort zone. She has published poetry under her maiden surname: Leppard, but she wasn’t made in Sheffield and, although she has wide tastes in music, she much prefers Raymond to Def.
Derek Duggan is a graduate of The Samuel Beckett Centre for Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Spain with his wife and children and is not a tobogganist.
Danny Gillan’s award-winning Will You Love Me Tomorrow was described as one of the best debut novels of 2008. Now, for entirely cash related reasons, Danny’s novel Scratch is available for Kindle readers (‘users’ sounds a bit druggy). It’s so funny it’s made people accidentally wee, apparently. Really, actually wee in their pants. True story..www.dannygillan.co.uk
Gillian Hamer is a full time company director and part time novelist. She divides her time between the industrial Midlands and the wilds of Anglesey, where she spends far too much time dreaming about becoming the next Agatha Christie. http://gillian]wordpress.com/
Dan Holloway In June Dan’s novel The Company of Fellows was voted “favourite Oxford novel” in a poll of readers from Blackwell’s bookstore. On July 28th he took part in Blackwell’s Rising Stars panel alongside authors Naomi Wood, Nikesh Shukla and Stuart Evers, and on October 18th is being handed the use of the Oxford store’s world-famous Norrington Room to host the spoken word event This Is Oxford.
Perry Iles is an old man from Scotland. If he was a dwarf, he’d be grumpy. He lives in a state of semi-permanent apoplectic biliousness, and hates children, puppies, kittens, and periods of unseemly emotion such as Christmas. He pours out vinegary invective via a small writing machine, and thinks it’s a bit like throwing liver at the wall. He tells anyone who’ll listen that this gives him a modicum of gratification.
Andrew Lownie is a member of the Association of Authors’ Agents and Society of Authors and was until recently the literary agent to the international writers’ organisation PEN. In 1998 he founded The Biographers Club, a monthly dining society for biographers and those involved in promoting biography, and The Biographers’ Club Prize which supports first-time biographers.
Lorraine Mace is a columnist with Writing Magazine and co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam, of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, has had her work published in five countries. Winner of the Petra Kenney International Poetry Award (comic verse category), she writes fiction for the women’s magazine market and is a writing competition judge. www.lorrainemace.com
JJ Marsh - writer, teacher, newt. www.jjmarsh.wordpress.com
Matt Shaw - author, cartoonist, photographer, hermit, Billy-No-Mates. www.mattshawpublications.co.uk
Anne Stormont - as well as being a writer, is a wife, mother and teacher. She is also a hopeless romantic, who likes happy endings.
Kat Troth grew up in two countries, uses two names, and has had two different careers. One career she has spent writing technical reports for a non-technical audience. In the other, she attempts to write fiction. She tries always to remember who she is at any one time, but usually finds she has at least two opinions about everything.
Ola Zaltin is a Swedish screenwriter working out of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written for both the big screen and the small, including episodes for the Swedish Wallander series. Together with Susanne O’Leary he is the co-author of the novel Virtual Strangers, (available as eBook).
Editor’s Desk
Editor’s Note
Right then, who wants to know how many readers the June 2011 issue had? TWELVE THOUSAND! Actually, it was nearer thirteen thousand, but that’s a little unlucky so I’m willing to sacrifice 800 or so. The issue was linked to in countries all over the world, in a number different languages, and by sites from your basic one-man blog to IMDb. We were asked to syndicate and to sell our exclusive with Jo Rowling, but did we? No, we’re better than that (although I daren’t ask how much they were offering first). We also had the odd website which thought that blatantly copying the interview pages out of the PDF, and uploading them onto their website, or copying and pasting the interview itself, is okay. Well, it’s not, but thank you for taking note of my emails and withdrawing it.
How, I hear you ask, do you move onwards and upwards from there? An interview with one of the biggest (not dead) authors in the world. Well, that there is a very good question. One which for a while there I didn’t know the answer to. And then it came to me: just wing it like we normally do. Okay, that’s not strictly true. We’ve lined up a selection of both my own personal favourites, and some incredibly talented hot writers to cover coming issues.
As for this issue? First off, the funny, witty, and incredibly talented Scottish crime writer, Christopher Brookmyre, takes the helm and talks about his characters, including how to make them less insufferable. As you work your way through the mag, you’ll see contributors posing the question of us creating characters that are images of ourselves - um, Chris?
Jo Reed describes what it’s like to not write on a writing retreat, we’ve got comic ranting from Andrew, and all I can say for Perry’s column is watch you don’t spit tea on your keyboard as you pee your pants laughing. 60 Second interviews feature ... wait for it ... Steven Conte and Susan Jane Gilman. There’s a preview in the run up to the Lewisham and Wigtown Excuses to Drink Wine, I mean Book Festivals. We publish YOUR favourite characters, together with a couple of ours, and Anne talks about her love of the female lead.
Derek’s article is mainly about characters, although it could possibly also be used as a lesson in sarcasm. Danny touches on the subject of the newspaper that is no more. Gilly looks at more book v film, plus, the bit we all want to know, how many billion pounds the box office makes from films based on books. Answer: lots.
Our resident Library Cat gives you a series of articles this issue. Writing to Live Again is possibly one of the most poignant articles WWJ has ever published, but to top that she has the latest from Court 2 on library closures. For all you indie publishers, and all those thinking of self-publishing their e-book, Dan Holloway interviews Amazon Kindle’s number one bestseller, Mark Edwards.
There’s more short stories, more competitions, more very true, honest, horoscopes, thoroughly researched answers to rumours, and a crossword - plus answers to the last crossword just to prove we didn’t just have random boxes in a pretty pattern.
Our resident agent Andrew Lownie is back answering your questions together with Curtis Brown fiction agent Jonny Geller. Learn how to populate your fictional world with Sarah Bower in her second writing exercise, and guest Helen Corner of Cornerstones talks about self-editing.
We want to broaden the range here at WWJ Towers, and so we’ll not only be talking more about comics, but also scripts with scriptwriter Ola Zaltin. Resident clinical psychologist Sue Carver discusses empathy in therapy and fiction, Sheila Bugler is back with Synopsis Doc, and Lorraine answers your questions on writing.
Yep, this issue is once again jam packed with writery goodness. Now I’m off to have a glass of wine whilst you enjoy!
JD Smith
Your Letters
I’ve just signed up for your e-zine and am currently chortling my way through back copies. Seriously, there are some amusing, yet informative, articles and I’m very happy to have stumbled across Words With Jam. I will spread the word! Best wishes, Jackie Buxton
Brilliant! Gob smacking brillant! Made my weekend - can’t wait to get my hands on the hard copy. Just tweeted it and hope your readership soars! All the best, Nick, Pelican Post
From Facebook:
I’m delighted with this! It’ll take me all day to get through the content - but this one’s a keeper - Bethany Tudor
Yay! I look forward to every issue here in NZ. Have just bought the Smashwords copy so I can read on my Sony Reader while I’m away in Kaikoura this weekend. Cosy fire, glass of pinot, roaring sea and Words with Jam. Yeah! - Jo Bailey
Fantastic,keep on keeping on...we love you; well I do! - Kathryn Faulkner
Can I just say that Zimmerframe Blues has just brought tears to my eye - of nostalgia and mirth. Excellent job - Irene Pizzie
Thank you. Love the nice and easy one click to the Kindle. Xx - Pam Howes
Keep the cork in the bottle! I cannot wait for my online edition, when I have it you have my permission to have as many bottles as you want. You should be well chuffed x - Sami Green
Twitter mentions:
Loved the new Jo Rowling interview in @wordswithJAM. One of the better ones in years! It’s nice to hear from her. :) - Sarahbadger Sarah Keeler Badger
I say, @WordswithJAM is rather good. Some nice bits on genre, & you can read it for free online http://tiny.cc/wwj - writingislovely Rhian
Brilliant @WordswithJAM out now - http://bit.ly/cKr5MS - features amazing interview with JK Rowling and write up of a night I performed at! - lucyayrton Lucy Ayrton
Oooh lovely #wordswithjam print copy just thudded through my door. Congrats to all involved it looks fantastic - sallietams Sallie Tams
My Favourite and winner of a printed copy:
Dear Words With Jam,
The reason I like Words With Jam is that it has a good spread of interesting writing-related topics, but mainly because it has a SENSE OF HUMOUR.
Other writing magazines seem to be full of despair, desperation and angst from us unpublished hordes. This is marginally offset by the barely concealed glee from the Smug Bastards who have got a publishing deal, all saying with nauseating false modesty that if they can do it, anyone can.
Well, obviously not. Anyone can’t, or we’d all be living next to J.K. Rowling.
I know it is sickening when the brown envelope comes back again, but as long as there is alcohol and chocolate, we can get through this. And I have a goldfish to talk to, which is a great comfort.
Writing magazines can be a distraction from actually writing, but Words With Jam cheers me up and encourages me; gets my head in the right place to write. See the play on right/ write in that sentence? Good innit?
With love from me and Monty (the goldfish),
Janet Fawdington.
If you wish to write in, please email me at editor@wordswithjam.co.uk. My favourite letter will receive a free print version of the issue.
Subscriptions
The print version of the magazine is doing extremely well. If you want to receive a copy of the October issue through your letterbox instead of your inbox, visit www.wordswithjam.co.uk/paperissuesubscription for more information.
In addition, Words with JAM is not only available as a Kindle E-book, but also in a variety of other E-book formats through Smashwords.
Or there’s the good old fashioned free online copy.
Latest Podcasts
Altered by JW Hicks
In the June Edition of Words with Jam, JW Hicks won second and third prizes in our First Page Competition.
Of ‘Altered’, which won second prize, the judge, Andrew Crofts, wrote: ‘Wonderful, colloquial writing that is easy to read despite the unusual use of language. The first paragraph is fabulous - funny shocking, intriguing... The whole page is vibrant, funny and the slang doesn’t sound forced or false... I love it and would really like to read more. I want to find out more about Raft and Ratty. I even want to know more about the ‘sizeable corpse’”
Well, for all of you who felt the same, here is the whole of the first chapter, read by the author.
And if you want to find out more about JW Hicks, you can read an interview with her at: http://jjmarsh.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/interview-with-jw-hicks/
Immune by Mig Living
Something different for you with this one. First, a short story, ‘Immune’, written by Mig Living. Secondly, a piece of music inspired by the story. The title is ‘I Walked with a Zombie’, by Schmuckfenster.
“Every day is a struggle for survival against the zombie hordes. Baron is on his own. Apart from his zombie.”
‘Immune’ is read for you by Axeman.
Tales of Unrequited Love by Anna Hobson
A selection of poems performed by the author. Anna tells us, “They are inspired by dark humanity; by the shifting seething turmoil within; by the sparks created by collisions of character. I write about love, pain and heartbreak; about blind instinct, manipulation, and the selfish guzzling of emotion.”
You can listen to episodes, download them or subscribe to the podcast either at http://wordswithjam.podomatic.com or on iTunes via http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/words-with-jam/id423101927 - and if you feel like giving us a review or a star rating while you’re there, that’s even better!
Blogging Along
Since April we’ve had a bit of a blog revamp, and invited some fabulous guest bloggers to feature alongside our usual postings. Recent blog posts include:
The Enid Blyton Story by Gillian E Hamer
Following on from our Children’s/YA theme in the June 2011 issue, a piece on world famous children’s author, Enid Blyton ...
Don’t Forget Your Wellies by Dan Holloway
It’s festival time, season of indeterminate noodles, oxygen bars and trenchfoot. Now I’ve got nothing against such gatherings. I’ve been to my fair share (even written about one particularly muddy one). But what I’m talking about is decidedly more, er, indoors ...
Designer Labels by Rebecca Woodhead
You are wearing a label, whether you know it or not, and everyone can see it. What label did you pick? Unpublished Writer? Writer-To-Be? Did you even choose your own, or did you just accept one that someone else handed out? Maybe it no longer fits, but you wear it anyway, because it’s familiar, it doesn’t make you stand out from your peers, and nobody is offended by it. It is safe. The idea of throwing aside a worn out old label and designing your own may be a little fear-inducing, but what if you gave it a go?
Visit www.blog.wordswithjam.co.uk
Submissions
Words with JAM Best Comedy Scene Competition 2011
As you may have noticed we enjoy a decent laugh here at WWJ Towers. So for this competition we want comedy scenes, in any format – script, novel extract, short story, play etc. One scene per entry, as many entries as you like.
Closing Date: 19th August 2011
See page 39 for more details.
WIN a copy of Alison Wonderland - FREE entry
We’ve got five copies of Helen Smith’s Alison Wonderland to give away this issue. See page 38 for details on how to enter.
Closing Date: 5th September 2011
Ask the Agent
Every issue, the best agents in the business will give us the view from the other side. Not only do you get insights, tips and expert advice, but YOUR questions will be answered personally.
Email jill@wordswithjam.co.uk
Reader Letters
We want to hear what you think of the magazine. The good, the bad, the ugly ... the good. Simply reply to this newsletter. We’ll be giving away a printed copy of the magazine to the editor’s favourite each issue (or a wine voucher/random book to those already a print subscriber).
Question Corner
Do you have layout issues, problematic characters, or struggle to get to grips with your grammar? Each issue, co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, Lorraine Mace, answers your questions on writing: lorraine@wordswithjam.co.uk
Characters with Legs by Christopher Brookmyre
My new novel, Where the Bodies are Buried, had at its genus an unusual process regarding the development of characters: one surprisingly atypical among those proponents of crime fiction, myself included, who have published a series of works featuring the same protagonist. This experimental new technique might best be described as “thinking ahead”, and you would be astonished to discover how rarely it has been deployed throughout the creation of the best-known sleuths to be found on the printed page.
It was my intention to create a group of characters I could explore and develop over the course of a series of novels, shaped by their relationships with each other as much as by the events that befall them. You may be wondering what is so unusual about that, perhaps thinking of any number of crime series that have evolved their protagonists over years and even decades. However, the truth is that in most of those instances, the author was not aware at their inception that he or she was writing anything more than one novel.
It is a tale I have heard told repeatedly over the years by my fellow crime-writers: how they created a particular character in order to drive the narrative, with no inkling that they would come to be writing about that individual again and again. Ian Rankin says he never intended Inspector Rebus to feature beyond Knots and Crosses, which was why he felt comfortable giving him a name that referred to a puzzle in a weekly Scottish newspaper. He also confesses to initially making Rebus a jazz fan in order to render him more august, only to be confronted, upon bringing him back for further adventures, by the fact that Rankin himself didn’t know much about jazz, and nor was he very interested in learning more. He did, however, know a lot about the Rolling Stones…
The truth is that most of the time, you simply don’t know which characters are going to have legs. I fell into a far deeper pit than Rankin in creating Jack Parlabane, inasmuch as I saddled him with something much worse than tastes and enthusiasms about which I was under-informed: I made him insufferable. When he debuted in Quite Ugly One Morning, it was against the backdrop of a scabrous satire populated with grotesquely caricatured villains, and thus a mouthy crusading journalist seemed the perfect foil, not least because he also provided a ventriloquist’s dummy for my own ideological rantings. However, I never conceived of him existing in a world beyond his cartoonish origins, so when I realised that he was nonetheless the ideal vehicle to drive subsequent stories, I had to find ways of making him (a) more plausible and (b) less slappable. To this end, I endeavoured to treat him extremely badly and consistently take him out of his comfort zone: in Boiling A Frog, I put him in jail; in Be My Enemy, I stuck him on a corporate team-building weekend; and finally in Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, I had him narrate the story from the somewhat embarrassing position of being dead.
It is also my experience that you seldom know at the point of inception which characters are going to turn out to be the most interesting. When I was writing A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away, I created what I envisaged to be a peripheral figure by the name of Angelique de Xavia; (like Rebus, the surname was something of an in-joke). She was supposed to resemble, in the eyes of my gamer-geek protagonist Raymond Ash, a video-game heroine: all dressed in black, sporting an arsenal of weapons and martial-arts skills, along with a suitably comic-book nickname, Angel-X. When I came to write her, and began asking myself who she was beneath the Kevlar, I realised that there were more layers to her than I had room to explore in that particular book. She became the focus of my next novel, The Sacred Art of Stealing, and then returned in A Snowball in Hell.
Having learned from these experiences, I thought I should skew the odds in my favour by coming up with three main characters in Where the Bodies Are Buried, wondering which one would announce itself as the driving force for the next book. But in keeping with my life-long understanding that you know nothing about a book until you actually write it, I was wrong again. When it came to the sequel, When the Devil Drives, it was the story itself that made my decisions for me.
Sometimes character drives narrative, sometimes narrative drives character. In the end, you generally find the process has been a symbiosis of both: the folly is in thinking you can choose which path to start from in advance.
About Christopher
Christopher Brookmyre is the author of fourteen published novels to-date, the latest being Where The Bodies Are Buried.
In 2006 Christopher won the seventh Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses An Eye and, as is tradition, a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig was named after the winning novel.
On accepting the award, Christopher said:
“My favourite PG Wodehouse quote is ‘It is seldom difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine’; today I’d like to think that I resemble the ray of sunshine.”
Quite Ugly One Morning was the winner of the Critics’ First Blood Award for Best First Crime Novel of the Year in 1996.
The short story “Bampot Central” was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger in 1997; Christopher has written a fair few other pieces of short fiction.
Boiling a Frog won the Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective Novel in 2000 and Christopher became the only writer to win two Sherlocks when Be My Enemy picked up the 2004 prize.
In 2007, Christopher was given the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for Writing.
As you may surmise from the above, Chris(topher) Brookmyre is very, very good. We knew we needed someone pretty special to follow up our JKR interview last issue, and we found just the ticket.
60 Second Interviews with JJ Marsh
Each month, we persuade, tempt and coerce (or bully, harass and blackmail) two writers into spilling the contents of their shelves.
Twelve questions on books and writing. Plus the Joker – a wild thirteenth card which can reveal so much. Be honest, what do you put on YOUR chips?
Your intrepid reporter,
Jill
Steven Conte
About Steven
Steven Conte is the Melbourne-based author of The Zookeeper’s War, which in 2008 won the inaugural Australian Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, then worth A$100,000. The Zookeeper’s War has been published in Britain and Ireland and translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Barman, life model, taxi driver, public servant, book reviewer and university tutor are some of the jobs with which he has supported his writing. Steven’s website is at www.stevenconte.com
Which was your favourite childhood book?
The Sailor Dog (1953) by Margaret Wise Brown, the epic tale of a dog’s retrieval of his maritime heritage.
Where do you write?
Just about anywhere. For the last year I’ve been mobile, house-sitting and dropping in on family. I write at desks, at kitchen tables and in cafés. Spending time in the latter helps mitigate the social isolation of writing.
Which was the book that changed your life?
Sophie’s Choice (1979) by William Styron, which I first read at the age of 19. This almost perfect novel (Styron’s great compassion and humanity briefly fail him when he writes about the reluctance of young women in the late-1940s to part with their virginity) is the finest of a series of novels that I read in my late-teens in which a young male protagonist falls under the spell of a beautiful, compelling woman who later dies in tragic circumstances. I had my reasons. In places, Sophie’s Choice is also terrifically funny.
What do you think is distinctive about Australian fiction?
In earlier times, the encounter of writers of European descent with an immense and mostly arid continent, as well as an anxiety that real life and culture were happening elsewhere. These days, Australian fiction is exceptionally diverse, nicely mirroring the culture. Landscape remains a recurring theme, and the question “Who on earth are we?” keeps popping up. Having said that, we’re more outward-looking than ever before, and increasingly what we see when we look outward is Asia.
Do you have a word or phrase that you most overuse?
‘Feel’, ‘seem’ and ‘body’ all come to mind. Go figure.
Do you see distinct lines between genre and literary fiction?
Not a line so much as a continuum, and of course literary and genre fiction are always borrowing from one another. I see myself as writing in a realist literary tradition, which I think of as an evolving genre that each generation refreshes with its own technical and stylistic and innovations. What remains constant is the impulse to portray the world, not as it “really is” but rather how it feels – emotionally, intellectually, sensually – to be alive in it.
Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t?
Ian McEwan’s Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam. Since the early 1980s I’ve been a huge admirer of McEwan’s work and have always found it perverse that he won the Booker for what I feel is his least engaging novel. Having said that, I should probably reread the book to see if I now feel differently about it.
What have you learned from writing?
Tenacity. Separating, as far as possible, my sense of self worth from the downs and also the ups of writing.
Do you have a guilty reading pleasure?
Women’s magazines in waiting rooms.
E-books – nemesis or genesis?
Genesis, so long as we repel the pirates. My fetish is for words, not for pulped Finnish pine.
Which book/writer deserves to be better known?
Mates of Mars (1991) by the Australian satirist David Foster. A fearless and abrasive novel about a disparate band of Sydney taekwondo enthusiasts who attend a training camp in the Northern Territory, get caught in the Wet, become involved in an Aboriginal payback killing and then have to escape by stealing a prawn trawler in a bid to fish their way to Singapore. The triumphantly two-dimensional characters include a medical professor, a Chinese postgraduate student, a feminist self-defence instructor, an Aboriginal rugby-league star, a male model, and a nightclub bouncer who deliberately severs his paralysed legs, only to recover full use of his stumps.
What are you working on at the moment?
Another novel.
What scares you most - spiders, snakes or critics?
I’m always pleased to discover that there are people who care enough about fiction to write critically about it. So I’d have to say snakes, which, after cars, pose the nastiest threat to my nearest companion, a flat-coated retriever named Meddles.
Susan Jane Gilman
About Susan
Author of three nonfiction books, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and Kiss My Tiara, Susan has written for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Real Simple, Washington City Paper, Us magazine and won a New York Press Association Award for features written on assignment in Poland. Her short stories have been published in Ploughshares, Story, Beloit Fiction Journal, Greensboro Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review and she was awarded VQR’s 1999 Literary Award for short fiction. Susan is also a commentator for National Public Radio and co-hosts “Bookmark”, a monthly book show on World Radio Switzerland.
Which was your favourite childhood book?
Eloise by Kay Thompson. The protagonist is a smart-mouthed, rebellious, precocious firebrand who creates her own reality and takes over the Plaza Hotel. And she’s six. What’s not to love? My parents gave this book to me when I was six and have been regretting it ever since: I immediately took to Eloise as a kindred spirit and a role model. To this day, it’s one of my favourite books. And she’s still one of my role models.
Where do you write, what objects are on your desk, and why?
I have a home office with a big white laminate desk where I sit immobilized and plagued by insecurity for roughly nine hours a day. There are always little knick-knacks littering my work space for me to fiddle (procrastinate) with. The most interesting are tiny, antique pairs of shoes that were made for Chinese women who’d had their feet bound at the turn of the last century. I bought them at an antique market in Beijing when I returned to China in 2005 to research my latest book, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. While the shoes might be replicas of the originals, they’re beautifully embroidered – and horrifying. The size is smaller than most toddlers wear. I keep them as a visual reminder of how constricted and crippled women have been throughout history – whether by society or our own desire to conform. I also have two huge, beautiful geodes that I bought in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco from a man desperate to sell me something – anything, really. It broke my heart. The majesty of nature and the pain of humanity are glistening right there in those rocks.
On a lighter note, I also have a hairy, magenta rubber yo-yo that lights up. I play with it constantly – whenever I’m stuck for inspiration, working through an idea, or stuck on-hold for 45-minutes on the telephone.
Who was the biggest influence on your writing life?
Frank McCourt. I had the great, good fortune to have him as my English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. His Creative Writing class inspired me to write non-stop and taught me crucial lessons about the craft. This was long before he was famous. He was, as we said, “just a teacher.” I was a teenager, which meant, of course, that even my hair was an opera. Yet he championed me and told me I had talent. One day, he told me to send a piece I’d written to The Village Voice newspaper. I did – and they published me. I was sixteen years old. This was huge professional validation. He also sent my work to national writing contests – and it won prizes. I adored him and worked out a way to take his class almost every single semester until I graduated.
When I headed off to college, he wrote at length in my yearbook: “Don’t, don’t, don’t ever let them still your voice…Go to your room and let your pen rip across the page…move over Jane Austen. Bow your head Mary McCarthy. Run for cover, Fran Leibowitz.” And in the darkest nights at college, when I was ravaged with insecurity and despair, I re-read it. (I still do). And I kept writing.
And we stayed in touch. Mr. McCourt, my teacher, became “Frank,” evolving into my mentor and friend. Whenever I had a professional triumph – an Op-Ed in the New York Times or a journalism award – I called him. He was as proud as any parent. And I, arrogant young upstart that I was, figured that one day, when I wrote my first book, I’d dedicate it to him so that, you know, he’d be remembered. He’d share a little bit of my glory.
HAHAHAHHAHA!
Of course, the whole world got to participate in Frank McCourt’s happy ending, in his global, spectacular success with Angela’s Ashes. We watched the awards and accolades rain down on him like champagne. And my friends from high school and I were delirious with joy: He did it! He did it! The triumph and justice of it was monumental.
In 2005, when my second book, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress debuted on The New York Times’ Bestseller List, the first person I called wasn’t my husband, or my agent, or my parents, but Frank. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” I choked into the phone. “You made me what I am today.”
And he chuckled. “I did, didn’t I?”
I simply would not be a writer today if it wasn’t for Frank McCourt. I bow before him for all eternity. He died two years ago, and I miss him every goddamn day.
What makes you laugh?
Human stupidity, absurdity, and naivety --particularly my own.
Which book should every child read?
Eloise, of course. And all three of mine. Kiss My Tiara, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven are all completely inappropriate for anyone under age twelve, but so what? When I was eight, my mother read me the J.D. Salinger short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” about a war vet killing himself, and I turned out just fine.
Do you have a word or phrase that you most overuse?
Yes, three: “Wow,” “Cry me a fucking river,” and “The world should have my problems.”
Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t?
Moby Dick. Ugh. I’ve heard two different and very brilliant professors refer to it as “the greatest American novel ever written.” But I found it tedious, phallocentric, and half of it barely readable – and I’ve plodded through it three times.
What would you do if you weren’t a writer?
I can’t even begin to imagine it – and for a writer, that’s saying something.
Which book do you wish you’d written?
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, although I haven’t read it since I was seventeen. But when I read the final paragraph, I burst into tears, I was so moved and overwhelmed and impressed, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wished I’d written it. Yet I haven’t gone back to re-read because I’m afraid it won’t hold up. The experience of reading it was so perfect and awe-inspiring and seminal for me as a young writer, that I don’t want to tarnish the memory and the impact by going back with a more critical eye.
I’d also have been thrilled to have written The Odyssey of course, simply because it’s The Odyssey. Ditto for The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. Run, Rabbit, Run and Eloise, of course, would be great, too.
Has the recent ‘made-up memoir’ scandal damaged the market for true stories?
I don’t know how it’s affected the market, but it’s made life tough for those of us who have written memoirs without making stuff up. Now, when people read about my dinner with Mick Jagger, or how I was forced to follow a Maharishi as a kid, or my disastrous trip through China at age 21 where my friend and I fell apart, they ask me, “Did that really happen?” That drives me crazy: Of course it did. If I made that stuff up, I’d certainly make myself and my loved ones look a hellava lot better.
For Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, which is about a naïve and disastrous backpacking trip I took through China when it had just opened up to young travellers, my publisher had me track down some of the people who’d helped save my life two decades ago. They wanted me to have as much documentation and verification as possible before we went to press. While it was amazing to track down some of the people in my memoir, it was also extremely nerve-wracking and time-consuming. They were all over the globe.
I also feel very strongly that if you’re going to pen a memoir, then you have an obligation to tell the truth as best you remember it. The fact that a story is true gives it a particular power – and resonance with readers. After reading my books, a lot of people write me very confessional letters and emails. My books comfort them, make them feel less alone, less vulnerable, and less freakish because they feel a connection with my own experiences. Sometimes, they tell me they feel like I’m a close friend. They pour their hearts out to me at readings and dinner parties. If I were to turn around and say, “Oh, my family didn’t really implode,” or “I wasn’t really bullied like that – I just made it up to sell books,” they’d feel hideously betrayed and sort of violated.
If you’ve got a great story that didn’t really happen to you, just write it as a novel and call it a day.
What are you working on at the moment?
My three published books are non-fiction. Now, frankly I’ve had it with reality, so I’m working on a novel. I’m happy to report that it’s every bit as difficult to write as my other three books.
Which pizza topping best represents your personality?
Smoked salmon. And chocolate.
Book Festivals – A Preview
Lewisham Literary Festival - coming soon with Sheila Bugler
I live in Lewisham, South-East London. It’s a great place to live, full of creative, community-spirited people who run all sorts of exciting cultural events, including the borough’s first ever literary festival, taking place in September 2011. Excited at the prospect of my very own local lit fest, I tracked down festival organiser, Rachel Holdsworth, and persuaded her to tell me more. Here, Rachel tells WWJ her reasons for running this event, and explains why cakes will be almost as important as books at this literary festival.
What inspired you to run a literary festival?
It was a combination of things, really. I’ve been writing about London’s literary scene for the last 18 months with Londonist.com: the festivals, the talks, the brilliant new salons and events. I was marginally involved with last year’s Peckham Literary Festival which was a big success, and the Save Libraries campaign had such passion in Lewisham that the idea began to grow. But it wasn’t until I spoke to the team behind Hither Green Hall, who put on regular cinema screenings and campaign for a cinema in the borough, that practicality and ideas came together.
Have you ever done anything like this before?
No! You always think the people who put together events like this are hyper-organised and extremely well connected - it turns out they’re actually just part of an enthusiastic local community. I’ve lived in Lewisham for nearly five years and I still get blown away by the creativity, determination and friendliness of the people who live here. I may never be allowed to cross the Thames again, but I think the festival would be a lot harder to organise in North London.
How’s it going so far?
Rather well. We have five venues confirmed - three libraries (Lewisham Libraries have been very supportive), the Cafe of Good Hope and St Swithun’s church hall. We’ve got some council funding, the programme is nearly finished and the Crystal Palace-based Bookseller Crow on the Hill will run a pop-up bookshop. All we have to do now is sort out the bar...
Tell us a bit more about the events taking place during the festival
We’re aiming for a good spread: there are the ‘traditional’ author panels with readings, chat and audience Q&A (including award-winning and bestselling writers), historical talks, a preview of Black History Month, performance poetry, book swapping and comedy storytelling for grown-ups. There’ll also be free events for children with published authors being fun and silly and making reading interesting.
And we’re running a poetry competition for young people in the borough aged 14 and under (details below).
Literary festivals can sometimes be perceived as being stuffy. How will this one be different?
Everyone will be welcome at the festival; we won’t make you feel inadequate if you haven’t read Ulysses (I certainly haven’t). We really want to avoid that stereotype of bearded, middle-aged, professor types droning on about being influenced by some 18th century writer you’ve never heard of. We plan to have a bar selling wine and real ale, for a start, and we’re inviting interesting, exciting writers to come and talk. To set the tone the opening event will be the Firestation Book Swap, which is a monthly event at the Firestation Arts Centre in Windsor. It’s irreverent, anarchic and people get in free if they bring homemade cake. Cake and books! What could be better?
What are you most looking forward to?
Being diplomatic: everything. And that is true - there’s nothing that’s been programmed as a ‘filler’. Being specific: the Firestation Book Swap and Tall Tales storytelling, to close the festival, are excellent events that happen regularly elsewhere and are coming on tour to Lewisham. I’m also excited about seeing Joe Dunthorne (author of Submarine) and Skeptics in the Pub are putting together a science panel. The poetry night should have some real energy... Basically: yes, everything.
And least?
Eight days of running around and not sleeping properly.
How can I find out more?
The festival is happening 9 – 16 September, 2011 in venues across Lewisham and Hither Green. More information is available on our blog (http://lewishamlitfest.wordpress.com/). If you want to be added to our mailing list, drop us an email on lewishamlitfest@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and get updates in your news feed by liking us on Facebook.
As I’ve mentioned, we’re also running a poetry competition for children (14 and under). We’re looking for poems on the subject of ‘Lewisham’ and there are no restrictions on the type of poem, anything and everything is welcome – haikus, sonnets, Limericks, whatever… you decide!
The best 30 or so (as judged by a group of local poets including Janett Plummer) will be printed, bound into a book and presented to libraries and schools. The best overall poem will receive a £20 gift card from Foyles. Make sure each entry has your name, age and your address or the address of your school or youth group! Closing date for entries is 16th September, and they can be sent to:
Lewisham Literary Festival
c/o Cooper Locke
Gallery
132 Hither Green Lane
Hither Green
London SE13
6QA
Wigtown Book Festival - coming soon with Danny Gillan
It’s almost that time again. It’s almost time for two brave souls from WWJ Towers to shape up and ship out on possibly their most dangerous mission of the year. Yes, The Wigtown Book Festival is almost upon us and, just as we have been for the past two years, we’ll be risking almost every internal organ we possess in our efforts to bring you the highlights, lowlights and shining lights of the week-long literary extravaganza. Just for you we’re willing to endure the hell of all those book shops, bars, book shops, hotels, book shops and restaurants - the wine, good God, the wine!
See how much we love you?
Check below for details of some of the writers appearing this year, and come back in our December issue to read our exclusive coverage of the event. Be warned, there may be hangovers.
Chris Brookmyre, Tam Dalyell, Tom Devine, Janice Galloway, Misha Glenny, Celia Imrie, AL Kennedy, Rory Stewart, David Vann and Maggie O’Farrell are just some of those already confirmed to attend this year’s Wigtown Book Festival.
The 2011 Wigtown Book Festival programme is currently being prepared and will be off the press in early August. Friends, Friends for Life and Benefactors will receive their copies hot off the press, followed closely by those on the festival mailing list. If you are not on the mailing list and would like to receive a copy, please email your full name and postal address to mail@wigtownbookfestival.com.
Writer’s Rehab By Jo Reed
We’ve all been there. I finally get a day off to really get stuck into that short story/article/novel chapter I’ve been trying to write for weeks. I sit down at the desk and suddenly the three month old lump of cheese on the carpet starts to get on my nerves. I nip into the kitchen to get the dustpan, and notice the pile of washing I meant to put in the machine yesterday. While I’m there I might as well take the rubbish out, so I grab the bag, and on the way back from the bin I notice all those weeds in the front garden, the ones that are going to shower the whole street with seeds and draw down the vilification of my neighbours if I don’t do something about it NOW.