Commentary

J K Rowling Explains

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There is an article by Anita Singh in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph which gives some insight into why Ms Rowling took on the Scottish National Party and Nicola Sturgeon in the Big Trans Row.

J K Rowling

“J K Rowling has defended her stance on women-only spaces by stating the ’98-99 percent of sexual offences are caused by those born with penises.’ The Harry Potter author said she felt a ‘moral obligation’ to take on trans activists who had adopted ‘the attitude of the fundamentalist’. Those close to Rowling had implored her not to enter the debate. ‘There were people close to me who were begging me not to do it,’ she said in the latest episode of The Witch Trials of J K Rowling podcast. But Rowling said she had no choice but to stand up against ‘a movement that I see as authoritarian, illiberal. I think I have a very realistic view, not a scaremongering view, on what may happen when you loosen boundaries around single sex spaces for women and girls,’ she said. ‘I can already hear the screams of outrage: ‘You are saying that trans people are all predators.’ Of course I am not, any more than I’m saying all men are predators. I have good men in my life who are among my favourite people. But I am also aware the 98-99 percent of sexual offences are caused by those born with penises. The problem is male violence.’

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, between 2017 and 2020, the 98 percent of victims who had experienced rape or assault by penetration since they were 16 years old reported that the perpetrator was male. Data also show that in the year ending in June, of the 6,403 people convicted of serious sexual offences, 6,223 were male – or 97.2 percent.

On why she felt moved to act, Rowling said: ‘I had been becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which women were being shut down. I was starting to see activists behaving in a very aggressive way outside feminist meetings. I’m looking at an assault now on freedom of speech, freedom of thought, even freedom of association.'”

It seems to me that some trans activists have lost the distinction between Respect and Rights in a democracy. Like any other person, a trans individual is entitled to our Respect. But Rights and Freedoms in a democracy are not unlimited. Rights and Freedoms can be trumped by individual Safety, Privacy and Fairness, as is the case with women-only spaces and most women’s sporting competitions.

Putting Emotion on the Page

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Jane Freidman’s blog has a useful post about writing believable emotion. The post was written by Susan DeFreitas, who is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won a Gold IPPY Award, and the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursala K Le Guin, a finalist for the Foreword INDIES. An independent editor and book coach, she specializes in helping writers from historically marginalized backgrounds, and those writing socially engaged fiction, break through into publishing.

Susan DeFreitas

 “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.

It’s a saying that applies well to fiction: people often don’t remember the plots of the novels they love, but they absolutely do remember how those books made them feel.

I think this is such a huge part of what makes us readers—and writers—to begin with: as James Michener put it, “the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

Okay, but…how do you do that, exactly? Meaning, how do you actually generate strong emotions in the reader—and how do you get the reader to feel what your character is feeling in the moment?

There are some very specific points where you’re actually writing the character experiencing emotion in the moment.

And this is something that many otherwise excellent writers get wrong, I find, by slipping into a distanced point of views, an issue that can occur whether you’re writing in first person or third.

Here’s an example of an emotion written in a distanced way from the third person:

She felt angry. “Stop that!” she shouted.

And here it is from the first person:

I was stunned. “I’m leaving,” I announced.

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with either of these little snippets—but the fact is, neither is likely to generate any real emotion in the reader, even if the author has set up those other key elements of the story in such a way as to predispose that reader to care.

So what will?

Let’s address why overt statements of emotion don’t work.

Think back to a time when you really were angry, or really were sad.

Did you realize, in the moment, that you were feeling angry?

Did you realize, in the moment, that you were sad?

Chances are, you didn’t. Not right away, at least. Because those words—angry, sad—are the sort of labels we apply to our feelings after we’ve had a chance to process them. The feelings themselves are much more immediate and visceral.

To speak in the terms of brain science: Emotional labels like anger and sadness are generated by the frontal lobe, that advanced part of the human brain that can think about what it is thinking, and think about what it is feeling as well.

To truly put your reader in the emotional position of your POV character, you have to dig deeper, to the more primary thing, the feeling itself, which doesn’t occur in the frontal lobe at all, but rather in the older, more primal parts of the brain associated with our physical and social survival.

And that is best accomplished by body language and internal narration.

Tactic #1: Body language

Body language is generally the easier tactic for most of us to get a hold of, because we’re all quite familiar with the physical manifestations of emotion.

For anger, for instance, that might mean:

  • your hands balling up into fists
  • pursing your lips
  • clenching your napkin
  • feeling your jaw tighten
  • shoving something out of the way

Those are all physical manifestations of an emotion that tells us we may need to fight, to defend ourselves or others.

For feeling sad, that might mean:

  • feeling tears well up in your eyes
  • feeling heavy
  • needing to sit down
  • closing your eyes
  • taking a deep breath

Those are all physical manifestations of an emotion that tells us we may need to reveal our vulnerability to others, so we can get help—or that we may need to go to ground, conserve energy, and nurse our wounds.

Fiction is full of the physical manifestations of emotions, and writers can often go too far with it, having their characters leapfrog right from bad news to outright sobbing, with no pitstops in between for glassy eyes, a tear escaping down a cheek, and so forth.

But even so, this sort of “body language” is indispensable when it comes to really translating the emotion of the character to the reader. Because it’s this sort of language that the reader maps onto her own body, when she reads it.

This sort of thing actually helps your reader feel the emotion of the character, physically.

Tactic #2: Internal narrative

But to my mind, the more important tactic, when it comes to the generating emotion in the reader, are the thoughts that actually carry that emotion.

Feeling teary-eyed and heavy, feeling your jaw clench—that sort of body language carries emotion in a general sense. The thoughts associated with the specific emotions of a specific circumstance actually put us there, in this specific moment of the story.

For instance, here are some thoughts that might carry the emotion of anger in a specific circumstance:

Julie couldn’t believe it—her best friend had betrayed her, and hadn’t even had the decency to try to hide it. How had Julie so disastrously misjudged her? And here Julie had thought they’d still be friends when their kids were grown, when they were two old biddies getting up early to hit the estate sales…

And here are some thoughts that might carry the emotion of sadness in a specific circumstance:

Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t had the slightest idea that anything was even wrong until the moment she said it. And now everything I’d worked so hard to build was crumbling down around me…

These sorts of thoughts are part our internal narration—the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and about what’s going on in our life. These sorts of thoughts help us formulate and preserve our identity, and to negotiate our social environment.

Internal narration  does a lot to show the reader the meaning the character takes from the event being related, which helps to keep us clearly in that person’s point of view—and helps us to feel exactly what they’re feeling.

Combining tactics

Now here’s the body language and the thoughts conveying anger combined:

Julie could feel her hands balling up into fists as she clenched the napkin in her lap. Her best friend had betrayed her, and hadn’t even had the decency to try to hide it. How had Julie so disastrously misjudged her? And here Julie had thought they’d still be friends when their kids were grown, when they were two old biddies getting up early to hit the estate sales…

Here’s the combined body language and thoughts conveying sadness:

I could feel tears prickling in my eyes, so I squeezed them shut. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t had the slightest idea that anything was even wrong until the moment she said it. And now everything I’d worked so hard to build was crumbling down around me…”

This is a good little tutorial.

Censoring Roald Dahl

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Today’ Telegraph devotes two entire pages (and there is even more on its subscribers only internet site as well as three paragraphs of editorial) to a detailed description of the changes made to Roald Dahl’s books by sensitivity editors under the supervision of Puffin, a Penguin Random House imprint. Ultimate control resides in Netflix which bought the books in 2021 for $686 million. Puffin is the largest publisher of childrens’ books globally. The article is written by Ed Cumming, Genevieve Holl-Allan and Benedict Smith.

““Words matter,” begins the discreet notice, which sits at the bottom of the copyright page of Puffin’s latest editions of Roald Dahl’s books. “The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters. This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”

“Put simply: these may not be the words Dahl wrote. The publishers have given themselves licence to edit the writer as they see fit, chopping, altering and adding where necessary to bring his books in line with contemporary sensibilities. By comparing the latest editions with earlier versions of the texts, The Telegraph has found hundreds of changes to Dahl’s stories. Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race has been cut and rewritten. Hundreds of changes to some of the best-loved children’s books ever written. Even Quentin Blake’s illustrations do not make it through the sensitivity reading unscathed. Earlier editions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory include three sketches of Mike Teavee with 18 toy pistols “hanging from belts around his body”, but the guns have been scrubbed out by 2022, as well as a related sentence.

“Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company made the latest changes in conjunction with Inclusive Minds, which its spokesperson describes as “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature”. Organisations such as Inclusive Minds have sprung up to help publishers navigate these newly choppy waters. Alexandra Strick, a co-founder of Inclusive Minds, says they “aim to ensure authentic representation, by working closely with the book world and with those who have lived experience of any facet of diversity”. To do this, they call on a team of “Inclusion Ambassadors” with a variety of “lived experience”. She says they mostly work with authors writing now, but are sometimes asked to work on older texts.

“When it came to children’s books, Matthew Dennison (a biographer of Dahl) says Dahl didn’t care what adults thought as long as his target readers were happy. “‘I don’t give a b—-r what grown-ups think,’ was a characteristic statement,” Dennison says. “And I’m almost certain that he would have recognised that alterations to his novels prompted by the political climate were driven by adults rather than children, and this always inspired derision, if not contempt, in Dahl. He never, for example, had any truck with librarians who criticised his books as too frightening, lacking moral role models, negative in their portrayal of women, etc,” he continues. “Dahl wrote stories intended to kindle in children a lifelong love of reading and to remind them of the childhood wonderlands of magic and enchantment, aims in which he succeeded triumphantly. Adult anxieties about political niceties didn’t register in this outlook. This said, although Dahl could be unabashed in offending adults, he took pains never to alienate or make unhappy his child readers.””

My view is that Puffin and Inclusive Minds have got it largely wrong. I grew up reading classic stories that were absolutely enchanting and also included violence and bits of racism and misogyny. I could have done without the latter two items, but in retrospect, I didn’t pay much attention to them, nor was I brainwashed by them. Children like stories with strange elements, and for this reason, I think that focusing on appearance, colour, weight, health, gender, and violence (up to a point) is actually counter productive. The story becomes too bland. I have a suspicion that most of the ‘Ambassadors’ of Inclusive Minds, while they may have some ‘lived experience’, none of their lived experience includes reading to six to thirteen year old children.

Ulysses Deemed Offensive

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According to an article in the Daily Telegraph, 2 February 2023, by Craig Simpson, Ulysses is being banned again.

“Academics say the Dublin-born author’s early novel contains ‘explicit references’ to ‘sexual matters’ that some may find ‘difficult’

Outraged censors banned Ulysses in 1922, and a century later academics fear the novel may be too shocking for modern students, as James Joyce’s work has been issued with a trigger warning for being potentially “offensive”.

James Joyce

The 800-page story of an ordinary man’s day in Dublin is taught on a dedicated module at the University of Glasgow, where staff now alert students to possibly upsetting “language and attitudes” in the writer’s work

Joyce’s writing contains “explicit” references “to sexual matters”, according to a trigger warning seen by the Telegraph states, highlighting the same issue which led Britain to ban his work 100 years ago.

Modern students are also warned they may be offended by references to “race, gender and national identity” in the work of the Irish author, who famously lampooned the nationalism of his homeland.

The blanket warning for the dedicated James Joyce English literature module at Glasgow states: “As part of this course we will examine texts that include explicit or graphic references to sexual matters.sec

“We recognise that some students may find this difficult and may find some of the language and attitudes towards race, gender and national identity that we discuss in relation to Joyce’s work offensive.”

The warning adds that a safe space will be provided to discuss Joyce’s literary output, stating staff will “endeavour to make seminars a space where everyone can discuss these ideas and engage with this content sensitively, empathetically and respectfully”.

The Dublin-born author, who died in 1941 at the age of 58, is regarded as among the greatest modern writers, particularly for his masterpiece Ulysses, which was initially banned in the UK and the US for the “obscenity” of passages describing sex and masturbation. The British ban was eventually lifted in 1936.

Censors principally objected to a passage from the point of view of Joyce’s heroine Molly Bloom. The main discussion of race in the work centres on the Jewish identity of the book’s hero, Leopold Bloom.

This identity clashes with the Irish nationalist sentiment of other characters in the book, which Joyce lampoons in Ulysses and his other writings, including A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, which contains complaints that Ireland is an “old sow” with “too much god”.

This early novel is taught along with his final work Finnegan’s Wake on the Glasgow module, which has been given the trigger warning, a move which has been criticised.

Prof Frank Furedi, an education expert at the University of Kent, said: “The trigger warning brigade demonstrates that the impulse to censor is alive and well. The spirit of the old-school censors who banned Ulysses in 1922 lives on.

“It was only a matter of time before the grievance archeologists dug up something to feel traumatised about in Joyce’s great work.

“The trigger hunters could not possibly give the author of Ulysses a free pass. For the record, if you find Joyce triggering you better confine your reading to the London phone directory.”

A spokesman for the University of Glasgow said: “We give warnings to students who may find some contexts disturbing or for whom a particular class session may cause upset. 

“We are, however, keen for everyone to engage, and endeavour to make seminars and lectures a space where everyone can discuss these ideas and engage with this content sensitively, empathetically and respectfully.””

I find this controversy somewhat amusing. Does it not occur to these nervous academics that the internet is awash with pornography, and that only an extreme ‘snowflake’ could be upset by it. One is tempted to advise these snowflakes, ‘Grow up, or don’t study literature.’

Page One

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Last Friday’s email from Harry of Jericho Writers was about writing that first page of a book.

“The start of your book is a delicate, beautiful thing.

It has a joyous quality for sure. Something like cracking open an egg, the peep of new sun, climbing on board a train, feeling the flap of a sail, a rope straining at its mooring. You only get that feeling once per book, and it’s worth relishing.

You can go big, if you want to. You can start in the middle of a bar-room brawl, with bottles flying and chairs thwacking. Or you can start with something apparently small, except that the wriggle of a little story-worm catches the reader’s attention and, dammit, they find they’re hooked.

But, of course, there’s another issue with beginnings, a bothersome one. Because agents, blast them, start books from the beginning too and they are very unusual readers indeed. Partly, yes, they’re unusual in that they’re professionals looking for work they can sell. But also, they start reading literally thousands of novels a year. How many first pages does an average agent read? Maybe two thousand. How many actual books does an average agent read? Well, probably roughly as many as you do – or a few more, because they’re pros.

Because agents read so many opening pages, they are deeply – horribly – familiar with the clichés of the genre. That means, they are exquisitely sensitive to badness in openings.

What’s worse is this: the opening of your novel may well be the first thing you’ve ever written. It’s where you’re at your least experienced, not your most. That’s true in general, but it’s also true of this particular story. Midway through your book, you’ll know your characters better, your story better, your themes better, your voice better – everything better.

Which means that when an agent picks up your book it’s effectively an encounter between a Story Opening Super-Analyser and a scarily undercooked Story Writer. Not fair, right?

And look: nothing I go on to say in this email is absolute. You could pick some horrible cliché to open your novel with but, if you deliver that opening in a confident and well-written way, then any sane agent will read on, with interest. For everything I say below, you should bear in mind that there’s almost certainly a classic of world literature that takes the cliché and rebuilds it into something wonderful.

At the same time, clichés feel wrong for a reason. If you can avoid them, you probably should. And with that said …

Dreams

There’s something horribly schoolchildish about any story that starts with a dream, before, two or three paragraphs later, admitting, “Then I woke up.” It feels cool, but cool in much the same way that my kids think that making pots of green goo out of ordinary kitchen ingredients is cool. Once your age hits double-digits, it’s time to move on a bit.

I think there are also two more specific reasons for concern. One is that dreams are totally unboundaried. Not rule-governed. And that doesn’t just break the laws of life, but of stories too. Even kids’ fantasy fiction has rules that govern its fictional world. Opening without rules feels disappointing – the difference between a park kickabout and a World Cup tie.

The other is that, once you get two or three paragraphs in, you play that limp trick on the reader: ha, ha, fooled you, it was only a dream. That yields a feeling akin to disappointment. “You made me read this, on the premise that it mattered, but it didn’t matter. Oh.” I’d gently suggest that this is not a feeling you want anyone – still less an agent – to encounter on the first page of your novel.

Beds

More generally, one agent once told me that a stunning proportion of all manuscripts she read – she reckoned well over ten per cent – opened with a character in bed. She reckoned she’d almost never, perhaps literally never, offered representation for such a book.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with that. You could imagine some Beckettian novel that opens with a character in bed and keeps that character in pyjamas for most of the story. But … again, I think there are two specific issues here.

One is that you don’t want to bracket yourself with the ten per cent of novels that an agent is most inclined to reject. The other is this: why is it that so many authors start with a character in bed and (usually) waking up?

I think it’s that the writer themselves are warming up. They are aware of embarking on something new. Of introducing a new character to the world. So they start at the beginning: the opening of the day. As they move their character through toilet / shower / coffee / conflakes, they limber up, like your pre-gym warm-up.

And: don’t warm up. Or, if you do, don’t do it on page. Don’t do it anywhere that the reader is going to see it.

Poetry & prologues

The fantasy manuscripts we see start with a snatch of poetry by way of prologue. Or if not poetry, then myth, or incantation, or something similar.

And again, you’re going to tell me that Tolkein did this all the time, and maybe he did. But poetry (and myth and the rest of it) is, almost by definition, harder to penetrate than prose. An opening needs to gently lift the reader into your story vehicle and get them drifting away from the bank, the train gliding away from the platform.

Forcing the reader to wade through a couple of pages of (often quite dodgy) poetry is the opposite of that gently lifting model. It’s like you’ve built a low wall in between the reader and the railway carriage you want them to get into.

Too much, too soon

My least-favoured story opener is with highly extreme emotion of any sort. Often some horrible situation (a prisoner under torture), but really any sort of extreme emotion, conveyed with a plethora of emotional superlatives.

The reason why this doesn’t work is that stories have the quality of new social situations. You’re meeting characters for the first time. If your best friend had a terrible heartbreak sob story, you’d be prepared to listen to the whole thing, dishing out biscuits and tissues as needed. But if you had just for the very first time met a new parent at the school gate and you got the same excessively tearful download, you’d just want to pull away.

A reader doesn’t care about an emotional drama for its own sake. They care because they care about a character. And that means learning them, building them, creating the knowledge that will generate sympathy.

That’s the ‘too much’ error, and it’s a particular bogeyman of mine. But there’s a ‘too soon’ error as well.

That error is giving away your punchline much too early. You have a world where gravity can be rubbed away via a smartphone app? Or memory works only for twenty-four hours? Or your character, a woman, is working, disguised as a man, on board an old three-master?

Then great! I love it! What great ideas!

But don’t tell me about them. Not on the first page, nor even the third, nor anywhere in the first chapter. Yes, of course, you scatter tantalising clues. A coffee machine that has to be pulled down from the ceiling. Reminder post-its on the mirror. Some odd piece of behaviour by a ‘seaman’ apparently remembering a husband.

The clues are what tantalise. They’re what drag a reader through the story. Once you deliver your punchline (“An anti-gravity app! 24 hour memory!”), that particular sequence of clues carries no more force. For sure, other things will come along – you’ll start introducing the full Technicolor complexity of your story – but we’re talking about openings. If you want to get the reader into your story-vessel and pulling happily away from shore, then those tantalising clues are a brilliant way to maintain engagement. In time, as the reader bonds with your character, you won’t need the clues any more. But during this first chapter, don’t give the game away too early. Use the clues, delay the punchline.”

For me, on the first page – in fact in the first paragraph – I try to stick to these rules:

  • A character is introduced
  • An important theme of the book is revealed (what the book is about), and
  • An uncertain, but important issue or event is presented

Here, for example, is the opening of Seeking Father Khaliq:

“May I ask you, honoured Professor al-Busiri, if you will go to meet Princess Basheera?” 

I looked up reluctantly from the student essay I was reading, and considered the bearing of the woman who had entered my office unannounced.  She was tall and slender, graceful; she was motionless, but there was a suggestion of incipient mobility.  She was dressed in a black naqib and a jilbab so that I could see only her dark eyes.  Her voice, however, had an optimistic lilt to it.  She must be about thirty, I thought.

Deliberately, I pushed the essay to one side.  “Who, may I ask, is Princess Basheera?”

“She is my employer, sir.”

“And what does this Princess Basheera want with me?”

“She has an assignment that only you can fulfil, Professor.”

Books on Credit

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The January 26th issue of the Daily Telegraph has an article by Chris Price which says much about the times the world is in.

“Egyptians have resorted to taking out loans to buy books as inflation surges in the country. Book prices have more than doubled as the value of the Egyptian pound plummeted by about 43% against sterling over the last year.

Authors have even reportedly begun cutting out characters and descriptions as the cost of paper and ink soars, with inflation hitting a five-year high of 21.3% in December, according to statistics agency Capmas.

Mohammed el-Baaly, of Sefsafa Publishing House, told the BBC: “A book has become a luxury item here in Egypt. It’s not a basic commodity like food and people are saving on luxuries.”

Keen readers now reportedly can spread the cost of a book over nine month at 1.5% interest, according to the Egyptian Publishers Association.

Teen fiction author Dina Afifi told the BBC she hoped the scheme would bolster sales. She said, ‘My book’s been downsized, slimmed down to just 60 pages from around 100, because of the rising printing costs.’

Mr Baaly added: ‘The cost of paper and ink has gone up tremendously. The cost of a ton of paper is nearly four times higher than the start of last year.'”

The interest rate of 1.5% quoted in the article must be a monthly rate which would be equivalent to about 20% per year.

The Guardian, in an article dated last October said; “The price of books is likely to go up, say publishers – which are acting to avoid steep rises for readers.

Some presses are exploring printing on cheaper and thinner paper, postponing reprints for older books and publishing fewer titles to reduce costs and avoid increasing recommended retail prices.

But the hike in costs of paper and energy and the effects of Brexit mean price rises are likely in the long term if not in the short and medium term, “if the current high production and distribution costs stabilise at the current levels”, said Juliet Mabey, co-founder of the independent publishing house Oneworld

Valerie Brandes, founder and publisher of Jacaranda Books Arts Music, said it was highly likely that book prices for consumers would have to increase “across all formats” by 10 to 20%.”

So, we’re fortunate not to be buying our books in Egypt!

The Importance of Sound

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There is an article by Susan Griffin dated January 20, 2023, on the Lit Hub website which is worth some extra thought and perhaps attention. Ms Griffin makes the point that the sounds of the words we write can make a difference to the readers understanding and appreciation.

Susan Griffin has written over 22 books, including nonfiction, poetry, and plays. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Notable book. Woman and Nature, considered a classic of environmental writing, is credited for inspiring the ecofeminist movement. She and her work have been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement & Service, among other honors. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Susan Griffin

Ms Griffin says: “Soon after my failed attempt at a war novel, I began to read passages out loud from books I liked. I had listened many times to my older sister, who was studying drama in high school, as she read passages from plays or poems out loud. So, as with practically everything she did, I followed her example. I read stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s stirring poem, “Renascence,” dialogues from Alice in Wonderland, and, though I never could finish the book, I loved to perform the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities.

Perhaps because of its notable symmetrical rhythm, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or the dramatic list of contrasting circumstances, “It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,” I loved this paragraph and would read it over and over, even when I was alone in the back bedroom, staring out a window that looked over other houses, streets, a few palm trees, and a giant neon sign depicting red paint as it poured over a round earth, imagining as I read that I was creating a larger perspective on the urban scene below.

I did not know yet that with this practice I was training my ear to take in the music of language and, in the process, beginning to notice the music of the various phrases and sentences passing through my mind, bits and pieces, which even without any clear logic seemed to carry meaning. Over time I began to recognize these fragments as the seeds of something I might one day write.

When asked in an interview “how do stories begin for you?” one of the great storytellers of our time, Grace Paley, answered, “A lot of them begin with a sentence — they all begin with language.”

We think of language as conveying meaning. But here, I believe, Paley is talking about sound as well as sense. “Very often,” she goes on to say, “one sentence is absolutely resonant.”

In this way, literature is not, as many often suppose, abstract. Its medium is the human voice, a phenomenon every bit as concrete and sensual as oil paint or marble from Carrara. And though modern attitudes do not recognize the meaning inherent in the concrete world, the medium is never passive. As Michelangelo told us, the material from which he sculpted his masterpieces guided him. “I saw the angel in the marble,” he said, “and I carved until I set him free.”

Sound can dive beneath presupposition and assumptions, the world of clichés that has already bored you, to unlock the vital yet undiscovered and unspoken worlds that lie just beneath the surface of what has become habitual.

For this reason, it is important that you listen to the words you have written. If the sound of your words is true (in the sense of a true note or hitting the mark), your reader will be riveted if not enchanted. And, more crucial to this process of writing, which you have already begun by this time, you will be exhausted; put in a kind of trance, the way religious ceremonies from diverse cultures have done for centuries. Thus, even you, as you write, will be led by the sound of the words you have written toward a wisdom you did not know you had within you.”

This advice may seem rather obscure and opaque. But I do find myself listening silently to a phase or a particular word I am proposing to use before, or even after I’ve typed it. Something about it doesn’t feel right. An alternative will spring to mind or I will consult the thesaurus. The alternative is much better. Perhaps the meaning is closer to what I’m trying to convey, but perhaps, also, the alternative has a sound that is more in tune with the feeling I want to transmit. I don’t think this is a scientific process; for me it is intuitive.

Review: A Message from Ukraine

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I bought a copy of Volodymyr Zelensky’s collected speeches at an airport bookshop in December. It’s a small book, just the size to wedge into a suitcase, 118 pages at £9.99, of which President Zelensky’s personal income from the book (at least £0.60 per copy) will go to his charity, United24, in support of Ukraine.

I’ve been impressed by Zelensky: his absolute commitment to his country, his ability to lead his people in their struggle against a much larger, heartless, autocratic and immoral aggressor, his skill at coaching Western democracies to come to his aid, but perhaps most of all for his restraint in not criticising donors who pinch pennies. It would be so tempting to call Macron out as a egotistical, French, Putin-loving, tightwad. But whatever he may have thought of Macron, he kept it pretty much to himself. And now, low and behold, there is a transformation: France is backing a military victory for Ukraine and is going to send Ukraine light tanks, prompting Germany to do the same and adding Patriot missile batteries.

Zelensky’s Wikipedia page reads: “Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy (in Ukrainian, his surname is spelt with two y’s) grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city in central Ukraine. Prior to his acting career, he obtained a degree in law. He then pursued a career in comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played the role of the Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.

Zelenskyy announced his candidacy in the 2019 presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year’s Eve address of then-president Petro Poroshenko on TV. A political outsider, he had already become one of the frontrunners in opinion polls for the election. He won the election with 73.23 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko. He has positioned himself as an anti-establishment and anti-corruption figure. As president, Zelenskyy has been a proponent of e-government and of unity between the Ukrainian and Russian speaking parts of the country’s population. His communication style makes extensive use of social media.   His party won a landslide victory in the snap legislative election held shortly after his inauguration as president. During the first two years of his administration, Zelenskyy oversaw the lifting of legal immunity for members of parliament, the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic recession, and some limited progress in tackling corruption in Ukraine.

During his presidential campaign, Zelenskyy promised to end Ukraine’s protracted conflict with Russia, and he has attempted to engage in dialogue with Russian president Putin. Zelenskyy’s strategy during the Russian military buildup was to calm the Ukrainian populace and assure the international community that Ukraine was not seeking to retaliate. He initially distanced himself from warnings of an imminent war, while also calling for security guarantees and military support from NATO to “withstand” the threat. After the start of the invasion, Zelenskyy declared martial law across Ukraine and a general mobilisation of the armed forces. His leadership during the crisis has won him widespread international praise, and he has been described as a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance. Zelenskyy was named the Time person of the Year for 2022 and opinion polls in Ukraine have ranked him as Ukraine’s greatest president.”

The speeches – there are 16 of them – were selected by Zelensky for the book, and range from his inaugural address to the Ukrainian parliament to Ukrainian Independence Day on 24 August 2022. There is a useful preface by Arkady Ostrovsky, the Russian and Eastern Europe editor of the Economist. This is followed by an introduction by Zelensky in which he reflects on changing the past.

His speeches are focused on several themes. Ukraine is a free, sovereign, independent country. Russia is engaged in an illegal and immoral invasion. Russia must be stopped because ultimately, it is at war with Western democracy, its values and principles. If Ukraine loses the war, Europe itself will be next. Ukraine can and must win this war. It will end when all the Russian occupiers are gone.

The language and the images are highly motivational. This is an excellent, two-hour read.

Australia’s Struggling Authors

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The Guardian has an article today by Rafqa Touma ‘Don’t Give Up Your Day Job: How Australia’s Favourite Authors Are Making Ends Meet’.

Ms Touma writes:”According to new research by Macquarie University, the Australia Council and the Copyright Agency, the average annual income from practising as an author is only $18,200 (Australian = £10,000). This has left two-fifths of authors relying on their partner’s income, and two-fifths relying on a day job unrelated to their writing. We spoke to some of Australia’s most celebrated authors who are supplementing their income with day jobs. Here is what they have to say:

Jennifer Down: the Miles Franklin-winning copywriter

Jennifer Down, author of Bodies of Light

Down won the 2022 Miles Franklin for her novel Bodies of Light, which was also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s prize, the Stella prize and the Voss prize. She is also the author of Our Magic Hour and Pulse Points.

At a weekend writers’ festival in October, Jennifer Down had work to finish for her day job: a brand launch campaign was coming up. So she sat down at a pub and pulled out her laptop.

“I thought if I have to work on a Sunday afternoon, I’ll do it with a pint,” she says. She looked so focused that a group at the table across from her made a passing joke: “Have you finished your novel yet?”

Little did they know Down had in fact finished her novel, which had just won the country’s most important literary prize. “The irony is that it is a Sunday afternoon, and I’m doing my money job while at a festival for my non-money job.”

Down was named the Sydney Morning Herald’s young novelist of the year consecutively in 2017 and 2018. At the time, she was working as an in-house copywriter for an Australian skincare company, being paid less than $50,000. “I was living in a five-person share house, and I could barely pay my bills.”

“It is surreal,” she says. “Outside of work, my writing is really respected. I had this modest critical acclaim coming in. Then at work, I’m having social media copy corrected by a person who doesn’t understand what subordinate clauses are and hasn’t read a book in 10 years.”

Down currently works as a copywriter full-time. She sets her alarm for 4am to write for herself; the alternative is foregoing social engagement.

“I don’t know if it has paid off. It is gratifying to have won prizes, but I feel like it can be incredibly isolating at times.”

It also means she’s effectively working seven days a week. “I don’t really remember the last time I have had two consecutive days off,” she says. “It is paid for in the sense I have been able to produce work, but it is not without a cost.”

Holden Sheppard: the manual labourer with a TV deal

Holden Sheppard’s debut novel Invisible Boys won the 2019 WA Premier’s prize for an emerging writer, the 2019 Kathleen Mitchell award, the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford award and the 2017 Ray Koppe residency award. He is also the author of The Brink.

Holden Sheppard is well loved among high school readers, with a TV adaptation of his multi-award-winning novel Invisible Boys currently in production. He is now writing his third book under contract; to fund it, he is working as a manual labourer in a timber yard.

“Authors are sole traders,” he says. “The part that doesn’t get seen is that there is a huge amount of admin.”

The Australia Council report found writers spend only half their writing time actually producing original writing. With invoicing, emailing, social media managing, talks at schools, event appearances and podcasting to fit between his work at the timber yard, Sheppard says he is left to write whenever it fits.

The annual income of children’s book authors sits at $26,800 – higher than the $18,200 average. Sheppard acknowledges his books have sold well, “but as much as it might appear successful, it is still not enough to live off”.

He deliberately looks for casual jobs instead of permanent part-time ones, for the sake of flexibility. “If there is a media interview opportunity, or an event I really want to do on a day of work, it is hard to get it off,” he says. “You jeopardise your day job and your income.” This precarious work he chooses rarely comes with entitlements such as annual leave and sick leave.

In 2015, Sheppard received an Australian Council Art Start grant for $10,000, but the program was scrapped after his round. “I feel that is needed again.” He also advocates for digital lending rights, which don’t exist in Australia.

“Each revenue stream helps us. When people take a book out of an e-library, we don’t see that revenue.”

Michael Mohammed Ahmad: the award-winning novelist who wrote behind the counter

Michael Mohammed Ahmed won the 2015 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists award for his debut novel The Tribe. His second novel The Lebs won the 2019 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Literary award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin. He also founded the Sweatshop literacy movement.

“I am a multi-award winning author, and I have a doctorate in literature. I am about as educated as you can get. I have sold tens of thousands of books. Still, I don’t have the job security of a manager at McDonald’s.”

While writing three acclaimed novels – The Tribe (2014), The Lebs (2018) and The Other Half of You (2021) – and setting up the western Sydney-based literacy agency Sweatshop, Michael Mohammad Ahmad worked at his father’s army disposal shop.

“When customers weren’t there, I’d be writing my novels behind the counter,” he says. “I only stopped working there about two or three years ago.”

He’s proud he was able to support his family this way, he says. “But it is insane that I had to do that. The industry isn’t set up to support people.”

Mohammad Ahmad still works seven days a week, with weekends spent writing. “I feel fortunate that in my case it is a job I am passionate about,” he says. “Writers didn’t enter the industry for money.

“It is an activity we’ve been participating in since humans could begin to think. It is fostering the next generation of thinking. It is something we find valuable outside of the capitalist construct of wealth. Even though writers aren’t making ends meet, they are still going to do it.

Anna Spargo-Ryan: the acclaimed author doing everything all at once

Anna Spargo-Ryan won the inaugural Horne prize in 2016 for her essay The Suicide Gene. She was longlisted for ABIA’s Matt Richell award in 2017 for her novel The Gulf. She is also the author of novel The Paper House and 2022 memoir A Kind of Magic.

According to the research, more than one-fifth of authors have a day job that’s related to being a writer – but that doesn’t make it easier for them to write a book.

Since 2013, Anna Spargo-Ryan has been balancing a full-time freelance mix of jobs, from ghostwriting and advertising copywriting to writing podcasts, websites, brand guidelines and feature articles.

“I do a lot of writing,” she says. “But all of it is for other people. A very small proportion of it is for my own writing work.”

Spargo-Ryan once held a romanticised idea of working as a writer. “But over the past 10 years … I have realised that the only way to get writing done is to fit it in.”

This year she published her first nonfiction book, A Kind of Magic. Although she spent the last three years writing it, she “barely remembers” the process. “I had a deadline, I had a contract, so I had to write it, but I didn’t have the leisure of having lots of time to get that done,” she says.

“So I wrote it in all kinds of small gaps. Waiting for the kids at school, before meetings, during meetings, editing on the treadmill. Whenever I could get bits of time … which I don’t really recommend as a writing process.”

Spargo-Ryan recommends writers learn to diversify their craft. “You might get an advance that is like a tenth of your annual salary, and that would be quite a good advance,” she says. “Then you are going to earn like three cents a word, for 100,000 words. In itself it isn’t sustainable.

“No one has a patron who pays for you to do your creative work. Part of being a writer is the hustle, trying new things, and diversifying the work you are doing.”

Omar Sakr: the PM’s literary award-winner looking for a day job

Omar Sakr won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary award for poetry for his collection The Lost Arabs. It was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary award, the John Bray Poetry award, the Judith Wright Calanthe award and the Colin Roderick award. He is also the author of These Wild Houses and Son of Sin.

“[It was] easy enough to do at first because I was couch-surfing and didn’t have much in the way of expenses,” he says. “But it has become increasingly difficult as I settled down and started a family.”

Grants and prizes gave him time to write his debut novel Son of Sin, but publishing involves a “relentless grind” of writing and touring, which has been “impossible” to sustain since his wife gave birth to their son this year.

The report finds more than half of authors find searching for income elsewhere to be a competing demand on their writing time.

“Now I find myself in a very precarious financial position, and actively trying to find a day job,” Sakr says. “Full-time freelancing relies too much on uncertain outcomes and requires too much of me, on top of being a dad. I already knew that our society doesn’t support artists enough, but it’s brutal to realise we also don’t support parents in a meaningful way either.”

Have Celebrities Ruined Kids’ Books?

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Ben Lawrence has an article in today’s Daily Telegraph which makes the arguments that not only have celebrities seriously reduced the quality of kids’ books, but they have also captured the publishing space to the detriment of competent kids’ writers.

Ben Lawrence, Commissioning Editor of the Telegraph

In the article, he says: “Long ago, when I was young, I had a vivid imagination that needed feeding. While TV shows and computer games went a little way to inspiring me, nothing shaped my thoughts like a good book. This was the 1980s, so I caught the tail end of the second golden age of children’s literature. I happily lost myself in the vivid, sometimes strange worlds of Nina Bawden, Alan Garner, Leon Garfield and Susan Cooper, while supplementing my addiction with the classics: Kenneth Grahame, E Nesbit, C S Lewis and Eve Garnett. Books build a child, and my career in writing and editing would not have evolved without them.

I was lucky: I had bookish parents, both acting as in-house curators, full of ideas of what I should (and shouldn’t) read. Yet if I were small now, I am not sure that I would have the same access to great children’s fiction. You could make the usual noises about social media and attention spans, but there are other worrying factors in regard to the 21st-century child.

First, I benefitted greatly from my local library, which had a staggering selection of books both old and new – and we all know what has happened to Britain’s libraries. There were, I remember, plenty of friendly librarians, armed with incredible knowledge and an infectious love of reading, who could make recommendations to me. In an age when primary-school teachers were less constricted by a national curriculum, we also had the luxury of “reading afternoons”: we could sit and browse the books in both the school library and the shelves which lined our classroom.

There is now also the serious problem of brand recognition. Writers today (whose average salary, in Britain, is down to £7,000 per annum) are unable to gain a foothold in the children’s market because they are being muscled out by celebrity names whose publishers can afford the most prominent slots in bookshops and supermarkets.

It never felt like such a problem in the days of JK Rowling’s reign: she, at least, was a career writer whose works – though not, I’m afraid to say, that well written – displayed a vivid imagination, and who did a great deal to get children interested in reading.

For the harried parent trying to find a book for their child, a familiar name on a bookshelf is always going to be the obvious option. The Duchess of York went first in 1989, with Budgie the Little Helicopter. But in truth, blame Madonna: 14 years later, her wafty Kabbalah nonsense, The English Roses, started a ghastly trend. Fearne Cotton’s Yoga Babies, Katie Price’s Perfect Ponies, Clare Balding’s The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog – they all feel like cynical cash-ins.

Perhaps the most egregious example, however, is the comedian David Walliams, now the most successful children’s author in Britain. Anecdotally, I’m told by parents who’ve bought his best-selling books that they’re appalling: sub-Roald Dahl (of whom Walliams is a fan), and devoid of heart or writerly flair.

David Walliams

The only thing worse than a child deprived of books is a child immersed in bad ones. Defenders might say that at least a writer such as Walliams gets more children interested in reading, but I see no evidence that he is acting as a gateway drug to better quality gear.

All of this is heartbreaking, because there’s so much to recommend. A quick ring-round to friends and colleagues resulted in my being bombarded with names. You should mention Emma Carroll, they said. Julia Copus is brilliant, said another. MG Leonard, Ross Montgomery, Nadia Shireen, SF Said, Katherine Rundell, Jenny McLachlan… Yet with the exception of Rundell, I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t heard of any of them (even if, not having any children of my own, I have a reasonable excuse).

It was enough proof to me that children’s literature is as strong now as it was 40 years ago when I was young. So: enough is enough. It is time to attempt to end the depressing monopoly of a small selection of not-very-talented writers. A concert pianist never achieves success by being mediocre, so why should a children’s author?

There is, I admit, a slight air of nostra culpa here. Children’s fiction has always been the Cinderella of the book world, and we journalists need to work much harder in highlighting works for children. As the children’s author and scriptwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce argued persuasively on Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, newspapers run plenty of restaurant reviews, featuring swanky places that 99.9 per cent of the population are never going to actually visit. Books, on the other hand, are comparatively cheap, and even cheaper if they’re loaned or shared.

So I’m going to make a pledge. From January, we will review a new book by a children’s author once a week. It could be a picture book for younger readers, a novel for pre-teens, or perhaps some Young Adult fiction. It could be a book by an established (professional) author, or a debut by someone brilliant and unknown. What you won’t see, I promise, is anything by a non-writer who is pushing larger talents out of the way in order to extend their personal brand.”

It seems to me that publishers bear some responsibility for this situation. They certainly know what a good quality children’s book is. To favour a celebrity brand-builder, who offers a short-term sugar rush of poor quality sales, over a professional author, who offers long-term sales to happy customers, is making bad business decisions.