Psst… want an award for your self- or vanity-published book?  Got $69 to spare? 

If the answer to both those questions is “Yes,” why not try the US National Best Books Awards?  If you’ve still got some spare cash you could buy a gold medallion sticker to put on the front of your book to acknowledge your award too.  You can enter more than one category of the multitude of categories available, providing you pay the entry fee each time so can win multiple awards for one book. 

So what’s the catch?  You knew there had to be one, after all, being awarded an award for your book can’t be as simple as paying an entry fee can it?

Most competitions and some book awards do charge an entry or administration fee.  This fee covers the costs such as running the competition/award, paying the judge(s) and the prize-money where relevant.  However, most book awards consider all the entrants, whittle books entered down to a shortlist, which may or may not be published, and give the award to a selected book or a selected book in each category perhaps with an overall best book award.  It’s this process of selection that confers prestige on the award.  With little or no selection, there’s no prestige. 

And there’s the catch.  The National Best Books Awards have very little selection.  The title may be similar to the National Book Award, but I doubt book buyers, who tend to rely on recommendation, will be fooled.

Let’s take two people who have decided to become writers and, for sake of convenience, let’s call them A and B.

Wannabee writer A writes poetry, attends the local open mic night and is often seen on the periphery of local literary events, networking with organisers, literature development networkers and arts administrators.  Writer A’s bookshelves are crammed with how-to write and other books on creative writing techniques along with writers’ autobiographies, but there are no poetry collections, no novels, no short story collections.  Writer A’s poetry is entirely written in first person, set in a contemporary urban landscape and often about writing or failing to write.  At the open mic events writer A rehearses reading their own poems and, if you asked, couldn’t tell you who else read.  Writer A never shies away from approach other writers asking for feedback, however, it’s rarely given because other writers notice that writer A never buys a copy of their book and never asks about them or thanks them for reading.  Stuck on a bus, Writer A notices an elderly man is talking apparently to himself.  Writer A suddenly finds an article in the free newspaper incredibly interesting.  Writer A self-publishes a poetry collection and sends it off for review.

Wannabee writer B also writes poetry and joins a couple of local writing groups workshopping their own writing and giving feedback on writing by other group members.  Writer B’s bookshelves are crammed with an eclectic mix of poetry collections, novels and short story collections.  There are no how to write books.  Writer B also uses first person when writing poems but adopts different personas, experiments with writing in different historical periods as well as contemporary times, can take a walk through urban or country landscapes and rarely writes about writing.  At open mic events writer B doesn’t always read and listens to other performers.  Writer B doesn’t shy away from asking for feedback but tries to buy a copy of the other writer’s book or at least thanks them for reading and makes a comment to show they were listening first.  Stuck on a bus, writer B notices an elderly man is talking apparently to himself.  Writer B leans forward to eavesdrop.  Writer B self-publishes a poetry pamphlet and sends it off for review.

You are that reviewer.  Which collection would you look forward to reviewing?

Without even looking at either of the hypothetical collections, I know Writer A’s collection would be introspective, technically well-executed but rather boring.  Writer B’s collection will be varied and will probably take risks, not all of which will pay off, but it won’t be a boring read.

Which writer are you?  What are your thoughts?

Related Articles:-

If you don’t have time to read, you’re not a writer 

How real life does poetry have to be?

You are not owed a reading by a professional writer

Last year a competition asked for poems in response to photos showing the immediate aftermath of a disaster and again after four years of re-building work.  One of the poets involved commented that they had hesitated before writing their poem because they hadn’t been there or known anyone directly involved.  They felt awkward and worried about the authenticity of their poem.  There have also been discussions at Magma Poetry about how poets can make it real despite not directly experiencing events and whether we should let our knowledge of writers’ biographies influence our reading of their poems.  Does it matter?

No one expects crime writers to have committed the crimes they are writing about.  Readers expect crime writers to have done their research and create empathetic characters so the readers can ‘experience’ the crime alongside the victims and try and figure out who the murderer was before the end of the book.  Generally novelists are not expected to write autobiography although there is an understanding that some events or characters that end up in novels may have roots in the writer’s life.

Poetry is also fiction.  So why should poetry have to be real?  Why does the question of “how do poets make an event they have not experienced authentic” even arise?

Most contemporary poetry is written in first person, whereas novels are generally written in third person.  There are exceptions, but most poems use an “I did/ felt/ saw/ dreamt/ experienced…” narrative and it is easy for readers to therefore assume that the poem’s “I” is the poet.  The assumption then becomes that the poet is writing directly from autobiography and poetry is no longer fiction.

This creates two problems.  Firstly it can create misunderstandings.  I know of someone who read Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips” as taking place in the aftermath of a suicide attempt because he knew the poet had attempted suicide.  What he didn’t know was that “Tulips” was written after a routine operation to remove an appendix, which puts the poem in a completely different light. 

Secondly it shifts the focus from the poem to the poet and encourages the view that poems about, say, the war in Iraq are only authentic if the poet has served a tour of duty.  Or that knowing a poet has served a tour of duty in Iraq makes that poet’s poem more authentic than a poem written by someone who’s never been to Iraq but done their research.  This takes us backward to the view that crime writers should have committed the crimes they write about, which has already been dismissed.  Surely the poem matters?

Poems need to be able to stand on their own merit.  It doesn’t matter whether the poet has direct or indirect experience of what they are writing poems about.  What matters is whether the poem is any good or not.  Good poems can come from indirect, researched experience and bad poems can come from direct experience and vice versa.  Incomplete research will show, but poets with a distance from the event they are writing about have the advantage of being able to put the event in context and focus on making the poem.  The key focus has to be on the poem, not the poet, doesn’t it?

Related Articles

Tragic Poetry

Six Tips for Finding Time to Write

Coping with Rejections

Been laid low by a viral infection, am starting to get over the post-viral fatigue and initially put down two stories, concerning a film director and the British Fantasy Society, to feverish delusions, but, no, apparently they’re real.  One is easy to deal with: Roman Polanski is a highly respected film director, he’s had more than his fair share of tragedy, but he also raped a thirteen year old girl for which he avoided serving time.  He should not have done, neither should it reflect on his film making abilities.  I’ve no idea what “rape-rape” is, but, as a rose is a rose is a rose, so rape is rape is rape, and those who signed this petition should have reflected more first.

On and off over the years, I’ve toyed with the idea of joining the British Fantasy Society.  But hesitated.  I don’t have a problem with the British Fantasy Society having a mostly male membership or that most of them proudly boast they don’t read poetry or even when occasionally one or two of them own up to reading my stories and admit “I really enjoyed this story, against all my initial expectations.”  Not a problem at all.  Despite recent fevers I’m not delusional enough to believe the British Fantasy Society cares whether I’m a member or not.  The only benefits I’d bring are one extra subscription, extra votes for the awards, oh, and a few short stories… 

But this really made me hesitate (again): at FantasyCon held towards the end of September, the British Fantasy Society launched a new book, “Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective. Volume One: Horror.” 

This book is not an anthology of stories.  For that I would expect:-

• A call for submissions from all British Fantasy Society Members,
• An editor or editorial team to pick the best stories (preferably anonymously),
• The best stories to be published in the anthology with author biographies,
• No double checking that the requisite gender (or other equality criteria) balance had been achieved, just the best stories submitted,
• And that’s it.

I would expect the best stories submitted to be published because this is a story anthology not an anthology about writers, therefore, who had written the stories isn’t as important as the stories themselves.  And such an anthology will feature fewer female writers simply because fewer women tend to send submissions to editors.  That’s not just true of genre fiction but also applies to non genre fiction and poetry.  Most women seem to prefer the anonymity and distance of submitting to a competition rather than a named editor or editorial team.  Why, I can’t answer as I’m always submitting work to editors.

However, “Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective. Volume One: Horror” is not a story anthology.  It’s a series of the best bits of interviews with writers.  Therefore the focus is on the writers.  Therefore it matters who gets picked.  Because the selected writers are, by implication of the launch happening at FantasyCon, writers whom the British Fantasy Society holds in high regard otherwise they wouldn’t be publishing the book.

But all the writers are male.  Not one female writer is included in “Conversation: A Writer’s Perspective. Volume One: Horror”.

To their credit the British Fantasy Society did apologise for the omission, tellingly mentioning that, “It is disgustingly simple for a man not to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correct gender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into.”

In his own apology, editor James Cooper says “The criteria for inclusion was simple: I wanted writers who I admired and who had influenced me in some way in the last 20 – 25 years.”  He goes on to say, “A female perspective, of course, would have offered a keen contrast to that presented by many of the male writers…I’d like to finish by adding that I am well aware of most of the female writers working in the field of horror fiction and intended no slight to any of them, though I can easily see how my negligence could be misconstrued.”

This female writer isn’t buying it.  In fact, I’m not joining the British Fantasy Society again.  Not that the British Fantasy Society should care: one lost subscription is nothing.

The Hurt Locker

Director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal, starring Jeremy Renner (William James), JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)

The title credits roll leaving a quote “war is a drug” fading into a scene where a robot is laying a charge to create a controlled explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) when it fails. The sergeant suits up and goes in, just getting to the kill zone when one of the company spot a civilian with a cell phone who can’t understand their shouts for him to drop it. It triggers the IED, and bomb disposal team have lost a sergeant.

His replacement is staff sergeant William James with a fondness for Ministry, particularly “Fear (Is Big Business)” and “Palestina”. Contrast the latter’s opening “Palestina was a very nice girl/ She liked to travel and sample the world…” with the second verse’s “Palestina told her family and friends/ She’d be back, to take her revenge/ Palestina made her mind up to die/ Palestina had a belt of death/ She had explosives strapped to her chest/ Palestina is a martyr now in the sky” and the way the chorus fits both Palestina and James’s lives “My life will be short and sweet.”

JT Sanborn’s first reaction is “He’s reckless”. Eldridge is inclined to agree. However, both have to work with him. On their first trip out together, James doesn’t bother sending in the robot first, but suits up. Finding Sanborn’s constant questioning irritating, James takes off his headphones and mike, so his concentration is solely focused on the IED, which he finds is connected to four more devices. Luckily he manages to isolate the charge so the task is reduced to wire cutting. The scene stretches credibility but sets up James as a risk-taker, Sanborn and Eldridge as resigned to working with him and implicates wider questions. The implication is James prefers to recon a suspect device himself rather than rely on a robot that can only see and report, not read a scene or establish the difference between a curious civilian and one who’s carrying a detonator.

A second incident sees the bomb disposal team turn up as an area is evacuated. A suspect device is in a car. James suits up and goes in whilst Sanborn and Eldridge are delegated to watch for snipers and potential remote detonators. Eldridge spies a civilian with a video camera and complains he doesn’t want to end up on You Tube. Sanborn sees three guys in a minaret apparently communicating with the cameraman. James has abandoned the suit so that he can climb in and out of the car and rip up the seat easier. The charge is found and IED isolated. Later that day a colonel asks James how many bombs he’s disarmed. James responds that he can’t remember but the colonel insists on an answer. Clearly thinking off the top of his head, James says “Eight hundred and seventy-three,” which would equate to three IEDs a day. That the colonel is amazed rather than incredulous non didactically illustrates the gap between those in command and those on the ground.

The rotation continues. Searching for an IED, the team find a hastily-left temporary camp and a dead boy left lying in blood-soaked clothes: the one gory scene in the film. Bigelow doesn’t shy away from death and injury but the focus is towards the people left behind, the people still fighting to survive today, whether civilian or soldier. Sanborn’s reaction is to get inexperienced Eldridge out but James hesitates as his instinct tells him there’s something the boy’s hiding. He’s proved right. That evening he phones his ex-wife who’s trying to put their toddler son to bed but can’t find anything to say.

But the team aren’t just about disposing of found unexploded devices but also investigating post-explosion. An apparent suicide bomb is detonated and the team are sent in to establish whether it was a suicide bomb or remotely detonated. Sanborn thinks the latter and recommends leaving it to the infantry to search for snipers. James decides it’s the former and commands them to carry out a brief search that almost results in Eldridge’s capture. Yet, in another incident James recognises that even he can’t detonate a bomb in time and clears the area before it explodes. So the recklessness is underlined by a self-preservation instinct.

At the end of the rotation, Sanborn reckons he’s done. Realistically the rotation is shown as a series of incidents with no story or narrative behind it. There’s no pattern behind where the devices are left. Some are clearly the product of organised groups attempting to terrorise people into fighting, others are left behind after an evacuation and seemingly forgotten, others are used by suicide bombers. This is a country where goat herders carry guns, young boys throw stones at American armoured vehicles and people are suspicious; perhaps damaged beyond rebuilding in any semblance of peace. Like a poem, the film focuses on one team of bomb disposal experts to tell a wider story.

James returns to his home, his ex-wife rescuing him in a supermarket by suggesting he come for dinner as he’s completely flummoxed by the choice of cereals. He casually mentions Iraq is short of bomb disposal experts. It’s no surprise when the next scene shows him returning to Iraq and suiting up before approaching another suspected IED, soundtracked by Ministry’s “Khyber Pass”, “Where’s Bin Laden/ Where’s Bin Laden/ He’s probably runnin’/ Probably hidin’/ Some say he’s livin’ at the Khyber Pass/ Others say he’s at the Bushes’ ranch.” The unspoken last word is that opening quote.

Josh Olson in Village Voice has successfully polarised opinion between new writers who feel that professional writers shouldn’t pull the ladder up behind them but help them on to the next rung of their writing career and professionals who recognised the wannabe demanding a professional reading on a manuscript he knew wanted re-drafting.

Whilst all new writers would love it if a professional writer would look over their manuscript, here are a few things to bear in mind:-

• Writers are busy: very few writers earn enough to live on by writing alone so are already writing around secondary jobs that pay the bills. Finding time to look at a manuscript, particularly if time is unpaid, is going to be hard.
• Approaching a busy writer at a festival or one of their own readings, signing or workshop is like approaching an actor who is in character and on set: the writer’s attention is on the task in hand and distractions are likely to be greeted abruptly.
• Being a successful writer won’t necessarily translate into being a successful teacher.
• Most writers have been approached by someone who thinks they’ve got a great idea. But great ideas are only ideas. A concept is worthless unless it’s written out on paper. Writers are too busy writing to bother talking about writing (unless they’re getting paid to do so). Set yourself a timetable, join a class and write. Otherwise the writer may take your concept and write their version of it (remember there’s no copyright on ideas).
• Most writers have experience of someone thrusting a wodge of paper in their direction and demanding an opinion on where to get it published. But writers need time to consider and respond otherwise you’ll get a deserved knee-jerk reaction that won’t be what you want to hear.

So how do you approach a writer?

• Research – check their blog/website and if it say they don’t read manuscripts, don’t bother them. You are not owed a living, you are not owed a reading.
• If you can’t find out whether or not they read manuscripts, track down some contact details.
• Query first: tell the writer why you like their work and are approaching them, ask if they can spare some time and include a couple of sample poems or the first 500 words of a story/novel and enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope if using the post. Writers like to be read: it’s the whole point of their existence after all. Writers also like proof you read because if you don’t, you’re not a writer and they are wasting their time.
• Wait. Understand you’re not a priority.
• Don’t send your manuscript unless asked. Meanwhile, work on it. Triple check spelling and grammar and present it professionally. Then start work on a new project.
• Remember to thank the writer for their time. You may need to ask them for a blurb later.

Personally I don’t think writers should pull the ladder up after them, but neither do I think newbies should assume they are owed a reading. Getting help from published writers – like getting published – is not a right.

Not all established writers got help when starting. Some did it the hard way: read, wrote, read more, joined a writers’ group, read, kept writing, submitted manuscripts to editors or literary agents, read, kept writing, collected rejection slips, kept writing, submitted new manuscripts, kept writing and worked their way up.

“I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score…”

shows Don Paterson’s latest collection is up to his usual masterful standard and right as rain, particularly in the sequence in tribute to the late and much-missed Michael Donaghy.

Don Paterson’s poetic integrity is never in doubt: his skilful use of rhyme and that he clearly cares about how the poem sounds as well as what it says.  It’s rare though that he gives a glimpse of energy and passion as in “Song for Natalie ‘Tusja’ Beridze”, a Georgian singer which also makes a play on tba being Georgian for lake as well as demonstrating Don Paterson’s skill with a longer line,

“This I wish you as I leave Invierkeithing and Fife
listening to Trepa N for the two hundred and thirty-fourth time in my life
with every hair on my right arm rising in non-fascistic one-armed salutation
towards Natalie, Tba, my Tusja, and all the mountain lakes of her small nation…”

Bobbie Faye wakes to discover her trailer’s flooded and phones her brother to curse him for not fixing the washing machine as promised.   As he doesn’t answer, a utilities worker cuts off her electricity.  Thinking her day couldn’t get any worse, her phone rings, the caller identified as her brother.  She answers to a gangster who’s kidnapped her brother and wants her to bring in a family heirloom in exchange for her brother’s release.  Her brother’s put on the call to verify this.  Determinedly self-sufficient, Bobbie Faye is not going to ask for anyone’s help.  After all, she just has to get to the bank, get the tiara out of the safety deposit box she has the key for and hand it over… Unfortunately, nothing in Bobbie Faye’s life is that simple and an ill-thought out plan by a Professor of Antiquities hoping to double-cross a gang of sadist gangsters, a genuine FBI agent, a bogus FBI agent and a police detective who’s also a seriously pissed-off ex-boyfriend complicate matters as Bobbie Faye races against time and her spectacular but credible bad luck.

The pace, whilst fast, is actually finely-judged with superb comic timing, as is the dialogue.  Good use of location too: Louisiana isn’t just a pretty backdrop but its geography becomes part of the plot.  “Charmed and Dangerous” couldn’t take place anywhere else.  The ease with which Toni McGee Causey hooks a reader in and keeps her turning the pages is proof of the well-honed skill and craft that keeps the everything moving.  The plot is complex, but doesn’t lose the reader.

Massive fun: a great, light read supported by a depth of writing talent.

The film’s not made it to Leicester, so I turned to the book.

“Well I congratulate you. You are the first person who has ever walked across the threshold of this house who isn’t riddled with ambition, frustrated or otherwise.  Even the butler is writing a short story. He broke the news to me yesterday,” Herb comments on his first meeting with Pippa.

A misspent youth pushes Pippa into marriage with a man 30 years her senior as the third Mrs Herb Lee.  She falls into the apparently humdrum life of a housewife and mother, enabling Herb to continue his successful publishing career.  Determination not to make the mistakes her own mother made sours Pippa’s relationship with her own daughter whom Pippa suspects sees her as a doormat.

Herb, now 80, moves them to a retirement village.  He continues to run his publishing business.  Pippa discovers that the security of her marriage was achieved through emotional compromise.  Disgusted by the doctor’s “sleeping pills and take up a hobby” advice as she finally acknowledges she’s been sleepwalking, Pippa begins to admit her past and explore her future options.

Rebecca Miller draws Pippa as a piece of unfired clay, moulding herself to her family’s wants.  She’s the one cooking dinners so Herb can entertain, she’s bringing a bottle to a neighbour’s party while Herb’s chasing a manuscript, she’s proud and supportive of her son’s lawyerly respectability and counsellor to her friends’ emotional dramas.   But what of Pippa?  You suspect she’s envious of her daughter’s self-sufficiency and drive, something hinted at when the book returns to Pippa’s youth and that problematic lack of ambition. 

Almost in Anne Tyler’s territory, but not quite with her confidence and absolute attention to detail.  Anne Tyler would never have given us a second wife’s death as “a fine spray of blood the shape of a huge Japanese fan surged out of her serpentine black hair, spattering him, all of us, like lava shooting out of an angry volcano.  The glass behind her was coated ruby red.”  But this over-poetic prose is generally rare, suggesting first-novel nerves from Rebecca Miller.   Anne Tyler’s prose gives a texture and detail that makes it very difficult to translate to film.  Rebecca Miller’s prose is a line that draws a sketch, giving space for the reader to colour the picture in.  Very easy to see how the book became a film.

Giving a pre-schooler an unwanted digital camera and letting her take photos on a picnic in a tourists’ spot on the Isle of Wight seems harmless.  But she takes a photo of a killer who only has four cartridges in his shotgun: one for the pre-schooler, one for her mother, one for her eighteen-month-old brother and one for their dad.  That this leaves the killer without a shot for his intended victim isn’t a problem until Doctor Karen Taylor turns up.

Young widow and forensic psychologist Karen Taylor camps in her family-owned chalet on the island where she’s come to interview Spike Falconer as part of her study into Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder.  Spike, convicted of the murder of the picnicking family, was adopted as a toddler by the wealthy Falconers who are reluctant to talk about their adoptive son, or, at least, Colonel Falconer is, Karen believes that his wife may be persuaded to talk if only she could be separated from her domineering husband.  The Falconers adopted because Mrs Falconer seemed unable to have children, but she fell pregnant naturally shortly after Spike comes to live with him, giving him a brother, Silas, two years younger than him, who is now a “successful city type” working in finance and earning more than enough to wear designer labels and drive a high-performance Porsche.  Dr Taylor finds her interviews with Spike puzzling as either he has an a-typical variant of the disorder or he doesn’t have it at all.

Apparently having overpowered a prison guard, that Colonel Falconer was privately paying to keep his adoptive son secure and who Spike accused of spying on the Colonel’s behalf, Spike escapes from Parkhurst Prison.  Dr Taylor gets a phone call requesting her presence at a potential hostage situation: a three-year-old girl has been tied up in full view of a window on the first floor of a house and the police don’t know if the abductors are nearby.  Rescuing the girl, Dr Taylor makes herself unpopular with the police for messing up their crime scene.  Spike is later recaptured, but Dr Taylor finds herself being dragged in for a police interview about her part in his escape. 

Of course, she had no part in his escape, but, having stirred up a hornets’ nest, Dr Taylor sets about pacifying the hornets.  There’s a lot of smoke and some of the hornets don’t seem to be sure whether they should be attacking their queen or the intruders and appear to change sides.  There are also powerful interests at work in ensuring Dr Taylor doesn’t get her answers.  Theories are fine for psychologists, but police need evidence that can be taken to court and Dr Taylor must not only consolidate and prove her theory but deliver evidence or at least a confession from the real killer to satisfy the police.

N J Cooper has skilfully created a labyrinthine psychological thriller that satisfyingly keeps the pace and tension all the way to the credible conclusion.  She focuses on the characters and their relationships, unobtrusively bringing in Dr Karen Taylor’s training and knowledge as real, solid background rather than something her character happens to do because the story needed a lead with access to the police who wasn’t governed by police procedures and paperwork.  Dr Karen Taylor has a personal life too but that takes place in the periphery of the story and is seamlessly fed in around the main plot.  A polished performance and I hope to meet Dr Taylor again.