Ten Little Herrings has been nominated for Best Paperback Original by the MWA [pdf].
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
The Home Stretch
And so we reach the end of the MNW Round Robin. Sob. I’ll try to hold myself together for these final questions from Suroopa to me.
You are a fairly prolific and well published short story writer. Do you write them as and when a story idea strikes you or do you write many of them together with a common theme in mind? Are they linked to your novels? Do they remain a secondary form that nevertheless occupies a distinct imaginative landscape?
I get less and less short story ideas now. They all seem to get sucked into the novels, and that’s fine, but I do wish I could bash out a shortie once a week, as I used to. Quite often I don’t have an idea of what’s going to happen when I start writing a short story (or a novel, for that matter) so I wing it, and sometimes it works. I usually have a voice in mind, and that’s the only starting point. There’s never a theme or a planned collection.
The good thing about short stories is the amount of freedom they give me to make mistakes, and to write in other genres and styles. I can’t sustain anything very serious for too long, but I have written some literary short stories that I’m quite proud of. It’s also an excuse to push comedic elements to their limit, into slapstick sometimes, as with a piece like Spitting Wasps. And that story directly led to the character of Pru from Light Reading. But, you’re right, short stories are a secondary form to me, and they fit in around the novels, or not at all. And I have written a few short stories set in my seaside town of Allcombe but they never seem quite right. So yes, they must flow from a very different place, and that’s probably why I write them. They allow me to be a horror/sci-fi/slapstick,serious writer, which suits me very well. Talking of which…
Your novels do not seem to fit a distinct genre. Is that by choice? Does it work to your advantage? Do you write with sequels in mind?
It’s absolutely not by choice. I would love to fit, to be honest, because then I’d be more marketable. But the moment I try to write with a genre specifically in mind it all goes flat and boring for me. I think I’m constantly trying to entertain myself when I write. I aim to take myself, let alone the reader, by surprise. This is not conducive to how modern bookselling works. Publishers want a synopsis before you’ve begun writing, and they want you to fit on a certain shelf. I can understand that. I just can’t do it.
Here’s a snippet of a conversation I once had with a publisher:
Pub: I want you to go free! I see you as genreless! Just use that quirky, imaginative style of yours and don’t be concerned about where it leads, okay?
Me: So can my characters go into space, then?
Pub: No.
This kind of sums up my writing career so far.
How do you relate to your characters? Do you visualise them in their entirety or do they take you by surprise? I find that you portray strong and rather intriguing women. You also have a strong sense of place. How instinctive are you as a writer? How do you research a place? What sort of readership do you want for the women you create?
For me it’s all about the characters, but they’re like real people in that no matter how well you think you know them, there’s always something new up their sleeves. And they are all products of place. I mainly research a place by living there. Luckily, I’ve lived in a lot of places so I have a few to choose from. They are never exactly the same in my imagination; you couldn’t draw a street map from my version and have a clue where you were standing if you took a day trip there. But I like the pretend and the real version to sit side by side. I don’t see why I have to be accurate.
I don’t tend to think about a certain type of person reading my books. Right now my offspring, the Munchie, is obsessed with what girls like to do and what boys like to do. I keep telling her that it’s perfectly okay to like Spiderman and fairies, but she’s not having it. I hope that anyone could enjoy my books, not just girls or boys. I’m not really a big fan of the whole ‘books for women by women’ thing. Or that only men should like Michael Moorcock or Iain M Banks. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, I didn’t write it with you in mind.
And finally, what is it about veggies that fascinates you?
I have to admit I don’t find vegetables that fascinating. I needed something to blog about, so I started listing the contents of my veggie box, and people seemed to enjoy it so I carried on doing it. Then, when Neil Ayres (ex-blog-buddy) redesigned our blog, he called it The Veggiebox. I felt I had to deliver more vegetable-based articles, so I started looking for vegetables in novels that I read, and I began to feel that all the novels I really liked had vegetables in them. And the ones that weren’t so good showed a distinct lack of veg. I don’t know why that is; maybe it’s indicative of a level of detail that I prefer in writing. I like to know what characters are eating and growing and placing in their fruit bowls and lunchboxes.
Vegetables (or fruit) make for a better novel. It’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.
Thanks Suroopa for the excellent questions, and thank you to everyone who took part or read along. Phew! And now we can slump back into our writerly slouches over our keyboards and get on with those novels. Chop chop everyone. There are onions out there to be sautéed, metaphorically speaking.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Ann Weisgarber wins Langum Prize for Historical Fiction
The Langum Charitable Trust has just announced the winner and other highly commended novels for the 2010 Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction.
The prize is awarded annually to the "best book in American historical fiction that is both excellent fiction and excellent history."
And the winner is Macmillan New Writer Ann Weisgarber with "The Personal History of Rachel DuPree."
Congratulations Ann,
thoroughly well-deserved.
The prize is awarded annually to the "best book in American historical fiction that is both excellent fiction and excellent history."
And the winner is Macmillan New Writer Ann Weisgarber with "The Personal History of Rachel DuPree."
Congratulations Ann,
thoroughly well-deserved.
Don't forget today's Twitterview!
... which is at 4pm EST, 9pm UK time. Search on #emlyn to take part in real time, or visit Emlyn's blog tomorrow for the transcript.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
A link.
Frequent commenter C.N. Nevets has a series of guest posts on his own blog in which writers discuss low moments on their way to success. The most recent guest post is by Roger Morris, so I thought it might be of interest to folks here. (It also happens to be a good piece.)
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Thanks Len, for the questions. They deserve in-depth answers. I will try my best.
You write not only fiction for adults, but also non-fiction and books for children. Your most recent work (I think) is a book describing the experiences of the survivors of the terrible tragedy at Bhopal. Which type of writing do you get most satisfaction from?
Yes, I have tried my hand at everything and found publishers in all three areas of writing, which is atrangely satisfying. If I have to say which has remained an abiding interest, I am almost hesitant to choose. I began writing for children in 1998 with a work of non-fiction based on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. It was an unlikely topic, but once I plunged into research I knew I was going to return to it some day. Since I was dealing with a man-made tragedy that impacted the lives of people I was collecting stories or oral narratives. It drew me to fiction writing, and all through the year 2000 to 2005, I wrote novels and short stories for both children and adults. From 2005-2008 I was on a fellowship in a research institute to work on oral history of women survivors of the Bhopal disaster. My research findings resulted in an academic book that was published last year. Now I am re-working on a novel and a compendium of shortstories after feedback from the editor of Picador (India), giving final touches to an article that will be part of an academic book on Fieldwork and Ethnographic Research from Oxford University Press (India) and writing a short story for a children's anthology to be brought out by Scholastic (India). Clearly, my writings over-lap, and I have the satisfaction of saying that I have dug my roots deep in all three areas of writing!
Do you feel that your non-fiction work impacts on how you write fiction – and indeed vice versa?
My inspiration is strictly through non-fiction; I begin with issues and then choose the form. Usually my writing and research happens simultaneously and my ideas are polemical and philosophical in nature and my characters embody ideas. My Picador editor puts it rather shrewdly. She says, "You are an instinctive story teller, but you never leave your characters alone! Fiction writing has very different rules from writing non-fiction. Once you have let your characters live their own lives, come back to me!" At the moment, I have brought my characters home and they are leading an independent life, which I am dutifully transcribing. I try to be disengaged and do most of my readings on politics, third world problems...and so on...
Yes, fiction impacts my scholarly writing. I am always lapsing into the anecdotal; I want the layman to understand what I am writing. I do not like the idea of my books merely circulating in university libraries and read by fellow academics. Oral history takes me to people's voices and each of the women I have interviewed in Surviving Bhopal...are as quizzical and finely etched as any of my fictional characters.
One further point that intrigues me is this: how does it feel to be writing in English in India today? Does English-language writing in India feel well-connected to the rest of the English-speaking world – and what is its place within contemporary Indian literature? And finally (of course) what are you working on at the moment and when can we buy it?
This is the most difficult part. Yes, I write in the colonial language and like most Indians I am well-versed in my mother tongue, Bengali, and the national language, Hindi, but I have never tried my hand at writing in any one of them. So in India my readership is limited to the urban, city-centric and elite readership. Happily for me, the Bhopal book for children has been translated into Malayalam and Hindi, so it is now read and recognised more widely. Writing in English catapults you into the international scenario, gets you more reviews, but till you win big awards, gives you less sales and visibility. But since India is seen as a potential market by publishers, an Indian writing in English has the added advantage of drawing the attention of major publishers. To the more political question of whether I write with an western audience in mind, my honest answer is yes and no. I have naturalised English and made it part of my post-colonial and indigeneous cultural heritage, but my novels have a local setting, my characters think and speak the Indian dialect and are very rooted in our sensibility and way of living.
For Aliya: You are a fairly prolific and well published short story writer. Do you write them as and when a story idea strikes you or do you write many of them together with a common theme in mind? Are they linked to your novels? Do they remain a secondary form that nevertheless occupies a distinct imaginative landscape?
Your novels do not seem to fit a distinct genre. Is that by choice? Does it work to your advantage? Do you write with sequels in mind?
How do you relate to your characters? Do you visualise them in their entirety or do they take you by surprise? I find that you portray strong and rather intriguing women. You also have a strong sense of place. How instinctive are you as a writer? How do you research a place? What sort of readership do you want for the women you create?
And finally, what is it about veggies that fascinates you?
You write not only fiction for adults, but also non-fiction and books for children. Your most recent work (I think) is a book describing the experiences of the survivors of the terrible tragedy at Bhopal. Which type of writing do you get most satisfaction from?
Yes, I have tried my hand at everything and found publishers in all three areas of writing, which is atrangely satisfying. If I have to say which has remained an abiding interest, I am almost hesitant to choose. I began writing for children in 1998 with a work of non-fiction based on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. It was an unlikely topic, but once I plunged into research I knew I was going to return to it some day. Since I was dealing with a man-made tragedy that impacted the lives of people I was collecting stories or oral narratives. It drew me to fiction writing, and all through the year 2000 to 2005, I wrote novels and short stories for both children and adults. From 2005-2008 I was on a fellowship in a research institute to work on oral history of women survivors of the Bhopal disaster. My research findings resulted in an academic book that was published last year. Now I am re-working on a novel and a compendium of shortstories after feedback from the editor of Picador (India), giving final touches to an article that will be part of an academic book on Fieldwork and Ethnographic Research from Oxford University Press (India) and writing a short story for a children's anthology to be brought out by Scholastic (India). Clearly, my writings over-lap, and I have the satisfaction of saying that I have dug my roots deep in all three areas of writing!
Do you feel that your non-fiction work impacts on how you write fiction – and indeed vice versa?
My inspiration is strictly through non-fiction; I begin with issues and then choose the form. Usually my writing and research happens simultaneously and my ideas are polemical and philosophical in nature and my characters embody ideas. My Picador editor puts it rather shrewdly. She says, "You are an instinctive story teller, but you never leave your characters alone! Fiction writing has very different rules from writing non-fiction. Once you have let your characters live their own lives, come back to me!" At the moment, I have brought my characters home and they are leading an independent life, which I am dutifully transcribing. I try to be disengaged and do most of my readings on politics, third world problems...and so on...
Yes, fiction impacts my scholarly writing. I am always lapsing into the anecdotal; I want the layman to understand what I am writing. I do not like the idea of my books merely circulating in university libraries and read by fellow academics. Oral history takes me to people's voices and each of the women I have interviewed in Surviving Bhopal...are as quizzical and finely etched as any of my fictional characters.
One further point that intrigues me is this: how does it feel to be writing in English in India today? Does English-language writing in India feel well-connected to the rest of the English-speaking world – and what is its place within contemporary Indian literature? And finally (of course) what are you working on at the moment and when can we buy it?
This is the most difficult part. Yes, I write in the colonial language and like most Indians I am well-versed in my mother tongue, Bengali, and the national language, Hindi, but I have never tried my hand at writing in any one of them. So in India my readership is limited to the urban, city-centric and elite readership. Happily for me, the Bhopal book for children has been translated into Malayalam and Hindi, so it is now read and recognised more widely. Writing in English catapults you into the international scenario, gets you more reviews, but till you win big awards, gives you less sales and visibility. But since India is seen as a potential market by publishers, an Indian writing in English has the added advantage of drawing the attention of major publishers. To the more political question of whether I write with an western audience in mind, my honest answer is yes and no. I have naturalised English and made it part of my post-colonial and indigeneous cultural heritage, but my novels have a local setting, my characters think and speak the Indian dialect and are very rooted in our sensibility and way of living.
For Aliya: You are a fairly prolific and well published short story writer. Do you write them as and when a story idea strikes you or do you write many of them together with a common theme in mind? Are they linked to your novels? Do they remain a secondary form that nevertheless occupies a distinct imaginative landscape?
Your novels do not seem to fit a distinct genre. Is that by choice? Does it work to your advantage? Do you write with sequels in mind?
How do you relate to your characters? Do you visualise them in their entirety or do they take you by surprise? I find that you portray strong and rather intriguing women. You also have a strong sense of place. How instinctive are you as a writer? How do you research a place? What sort of readership do you want for the women you create?
And finally, what is it about veggies that fascinates you?
Monday, 10 January 2011
Twitterview update
Thursday's twitterview will start at 22:00 UK time (that's 17:00 US Eastern Standard Time). Just search on #emlyn.
What do you call an interview on Twitter?
A "Twitterview", of course, and I will be a twitterviewee on Thursday 13 January (time to be announced, but probably mid-evening GMT). Prolific writer and web maven Emlyn Chand will be asking the questions, and I'll be responding in 140 characters or fewer (tough for a fantasy writer!). Search #emlyn on Twitter to find the twitterview and ask questions of your own.
I've no idea quite how this work in practice but it promises to be a lively, if necessarily terse, occasion!
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Keyboard Monday
In researching the seventeenth century, one of the more interesting customs that I have come across is Plough Monday - still celebrated in many part of this country, though not so much in Islington these days. Plough Monday is the first Monday after Twelfth Night, when traditionally the farm workers would return to the plough (or other fine agricultural implement of their choice) after the Christmas festivities. Of course, it was also an excuse for a last round of celebrations, including dancing, dressing up, parading a decorated plough round the village and collecting money for some vaguely defined cause. In some places it seems to have resembled trick or treating (you can do quite a lot of damage with a plough, if somebody declines to pay up).
Of course, not many of us plough these days, but office work does follow a similar pattern. London has been fairly quiet since Christmas - you can still actually get a seat on the tube. From Monday though things will be largely back to normal. And for us writers too, I guess. It's been easy for the past couple of weeks to find reasons for not getting down to the w.i.p. - the Sales have to be visited, the tax forms have to be filled in and the Christmas tree has to come down - but from Monday there can be no further excuses. In the absence of a plough to decorate (and I've promised my family never to do Morris Dancing again) I think we need to come up with a few suitable customs for Keyboard Monday. Any ideas?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
