As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve contributed to an anthology of new writing about Watford FC, edited by Lionel Birnie and called Tales from the Vicarage. It’s out later this month, but it’s available to pre-order now. You can read full details here, including a list of the contributors and a summary of each chapter.
It’ll be the first (and almost certainly the last) time I’ve ever appeared in print alongside an England international, and I’m really looking forward to reading his and the other contributions.
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Sunday, 10 June 2012
Bits and pieces
It appears that I haven’t posted anything here for three months, which is a bit of a shock to me – especially since ‘Write blog entry’ appears on my to-do list every week.
It’s a reflection of the fact that work has taken up an increasing amount of my time and – equally significantly – energy in recent months. As a result, I haven’t done a great deal of creative writing, and my new novel has stalled at chapter 7.
I will get back to it in due course, but in the meantime I have got a couple of things coming out this autumn. One is a contribution to an anthology of new writing about Watford FC that will be published at the start of the new season. It’s an extension of the sort of thing I write on my other blog, but much longer – around 5,000 words – and more nakedly autobiographical. I’ll be interested to see how it fits in with the other pieces in the book.
The other is much shorter – a song which will appear on the new album by Blue Angel in the autumn. As I wrote last year, my friend Jason suggested I try writing some lyrics for him to put to music for a solo project he was working on. He also sent me a tune with a title but no words, and asked if I could supply something suitable. I took his title (‘The colour of summer’) and ran with it, and it’s this song that he and his collaborators have recorded for the Blue Angel album. I can’t wait to hear it.
More details on both projects when I have them.
It’s a reflection of the fact that work has taken up an increasing amount of my time and – equally significantly – energy in recent months. As a result, I haven’t done a great deal of creative writing, and my new novel has stalled at chapter 7.
I will get back to it in due course, but in the meantime I have got a couple of things coming out this autumn. One is a contribution to an anthology of new writing about Watford FC that will be published at the start of the new season. It’s an extension of the sort of thing I write on my other blog, but much longer – around 5,000 words – and more nakedly autobiographical. I’ll be interested to see how it fits in with the other pieces in the book.
The other is much shorter – a song which will appear on the new album by Blue Angel in the autumn. As I wrote last year, my friend Jason suggested I try writing some lyrics for him to put to music for a solo project he was working on. He also sent me a tune with a title but no words, and asked if I could supply something suitable. I took his title (‘The colour of summer’) and ran with it, and it’s this song that he and his collaborators have recorded for the Blue Angel album. I can’t wait to hear it.
More details on both projects when I have them.
Saturday, 17 March 2012
It’s in the trees
This time last week, I spent much of the morning queueing at my local Royal Mail sorting office to pick up a package the postman hadn’t been able to fit through the letterbox. It was worth the wait, though, as the package included a shiny new copy of Even More Rock Family Trees by Pete Frame.
Literary heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and even though he deals exclusively in facts rather than fiction, Frame is one of mine. I first discovered his work just after I’d left school, and during a long, lonely summer spent working in a factory in Germany, his first book of rock family trees was a constant companion. I would spent hours poring over the minutiae of bands’ careers, tracing the developments of famous (and not so famous) musicians’ careers. The accompanying text was every bit as engrossing, a winning blend of fact, anecdote and opinion. Last, but not least, Frame’s family trees are works of art, hand-drawn and carefully planned to make even the most convoluted genealogy comprehensible. Thirty years after I first encountered them, I still find them as fascinating as ever. (If you want to find out more, check out the Family of Rock website.)
The stories I’d read in Frame’s books of rock family trees over the years (the latest is his fifth), particularly those dealing with the British Blues Boom of the 60s, were one of the key influences that fed into the plot of First Time I Met The Blues. Indeed, towards the end of planning the novel, I drew up a rudimentary family tree for The Hornets, to get a better sense of how the peripheral characters around the band fitted in. In my fantasies, when the book is picked up by a major publisher, I’ll commission Frame himself to create a proper family tree that can be included in the hardback edition. Hey, it could happen.
Friday, 24 February 2012
The dying art of editing
Do publishers not bother editing books any more? And do authors not take the trouble to check their work before they deliver their work to the publisher?
I ask because I’m spotting more and more errors in published works – both novels and work of non-fiction – and it really annoys me. I’m not talking about typos necessarily (though they’re not unknown), but about errors in punctuation or syntax, or simply instances of bad writing that should have been eradicated, either by the author or their editor, before the book was printed.
Take the opening sentence of William Boyd’s ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’. It’s a superb novel, one of the best I read last year, but it starts unpromisingly:
“Let us start with the river – all things begin with the river and we shall probably end there, no doubt – but let’s wait and see how we go.”
That contradiction in the section between the dashes, between ‘probably’ and ‘no doubt’, pulls you up short. Any decent writer (and Boyd is a great deal better than decent) ought to have spotted it when they read through their draft, and deleted one or the other; it’s what authors do. So did Boyd not check his work? And did Bloomsbury not edit it when he delivered the novel to them?
I’ve just finished reading another excellent book, ‘The Champion’ by Tim Binding, and it contains a classic example of the kind of sloppiness I’m talking about. The narrator, an accountant, discovers that a builder hired by his employer is taking liberties with his bills. On page 304, the builder is referred to as Paul Langley. Two paragraphs later he’s become Lumley, then four lines after that he’s Langley again. Further down the same paragraph he’s still Langley, then he’s back to being Lumley. Two pages later, just to confirm the error, he’s referred to as Paul Lumley.
You can see how it happened, of course. Somewhere in the process of writing the book, Binding decided the builder should be called Lumley rather than Langley (or vice versa), but he didn’t do a very thorough job of making the change. And, once again, neither he nor his editor at Macmillan proofed the typescript thoroughly enough before publication to spot and amend the error.
Does any of this matter? It does to me. A good novel immerses you in its world, and anything that jars when you’re reading risks breaking that spell. Good writing is writing that you don’t notice – and I, for one, notice errors.
I ask because I’m spotting more and more errors in published works – both novels and work of non-fiction – and it really annoys me. I’m not talking about typos necessarily (though they’re not unknown), but about errors in punctuation or syntax, or simply instances of bad writing that should have been eradicated, either by the author or their editor, before the book was printed.
Take the opening sentence of William Boyd’s ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’. It’s a superb novel, one of the best I read last year, but it starts unpromisingly:
“Let us start with the river – all things begin with the river and we shall probably end there, no doubt – but let’s wait and see how we go.”
That contradiction in the section between the dashes, between ‘probably’ and ‘no doubt’, pulls you up short. Any decent writer (and Boyd is a great deal better than decent) ought to have spotted it when they read through their draft, and deleted one or the other; it’s what authors do. So did Boyd not check his work? And did Bloomsbury not edit it when he delivered the novel to them?
I’ve just finished reading another excellent book, ‘The Champion’ by Tim Binding, and it contains a classic example of the kind of sloppiness I’m talking about. The narrator, an accountant, discovers that a builder hired by his employer is taking liberties with his bills. On page 304, the builder is referred to as Paul Langley. Two paragraphs later he’s become Lumley, then four lines after that he’s Langley again. Further down the same paragraph he’s still Langley, then he’s back to being Lumley. Two pages later, just to confirm the error, he’s referred to as Paul Lumley.
You can see how it happened, of course. Somewhere in the process of writing the book, Binding decided the builder should be called Lumley rather than Langley (or vice versa), but he didn’t do a very thorough job of making the change. And, once again, neither he nor his editor at Macmillan proofed the typescript thoroughly enough before publication to spot and amend the error.
Does any of this matter? It does to me. A good novel immerses you in its world, and anything that jars when you’re reading risks breaking that spell. Good writing is writing that you don’t notice – and I, for one, notice errors.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
The young ones
Having written a novel about a fictional blues band, I invariably find that when I go to a gig, I end up mentally comparing my invention with the real thing, to see how accurate my imagination was.
Last night I went to The Half Moon in Putney to see Nine Below Zero, expecting to see a band at much the same stage of their career as The Hornets in the later chapters of First Time I Met The Blues. I wasn’t disappointed – and NBZ were excellent. What I didn’t expect was to discover another band right at the start of their journey.
My friend Chris and I were catching up on each other’s news and barely noticed the support act (The Aaron Keylock Blues Band) take to the stage. We just had time to register that the trio (guitar/bass/drums) appeared to be in their early teens before they launched into a hard and heavy blues instrumental. All around us, jaws dropped. This was seriously good.
Aaron himself, the singer and guitarist, is a diminutive boy whose shoulder-length hair and check shirt bring to mind a young Rory Gallagher. But I doubt that Gallagher was this good at the age of 14. Aaron can play fast, intricate solos and slow-burning blues that build to a climax, he can play slide guitar, he writes his own songs – he’s even managed to become jaded with the biz already, earnestly introducing one song with the deathless line, “This is about the music industry.” The one thing he can’t do very well right now is sing, mainly because his voice sounds like it’s in the process of breaking.
So how do they compare with my fictional Hornets? I must admit that my imagination didn’t stretch to making a bunch of lads in their early teens quite as skilful and polished as Aaron and co. Des, the Hornets’ leader, is certainly talented and pretty sure of himself, but I never pictured him as being that good – and he’s already older at the start of the story than Aaron is now. It’s quite mind-boggling, really. Check him out for yourself if you don’t believe me.
The gig did confirm one thing I got right, though. I wanted the book to demonstrate that there is something about the blues that gives it a timeless, universal appeal – so why shouldn’t a group of boys growing up in Watford in the early 60s want to play this music? The fact that a boy from Oxford like Aaron Keylock is following the same path in 2012 is further proof that the blues will never die. The torch just gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Last night I went to The Half Moon in Putney to see Nine Below Zero, expecting to see a band at much the same stage of their career as The Hornets in the later chapters of First Time I Met The Blues. I wasn’t disappointed – and NBZ were excellent. What I didn’t expect was to discover another band right at the start of their journey.
My friend Chris and I were catching up on each other’s news and barely noticed the support act (The Aaron Keylock Blues Band) take to the stage. We just had time to register that the trio (guitar/bass/drums) appeared to be in their early teens before they launched into a hard and heavy blues instrumental. All around us, jaws dropped. This was seriously good.
Aaron himself, the singer and guitarist, is a diminutive boy whose shoulder-length hair and check shirt bring to mind a young Rory Gallagher. But I doubt that Gallagher was this good at the age of 14. Aaron can play fast, intricate solos and slow-burning blues that build to a climax, he can play slide guitar, he writes his own songs – he’s even managed to become jaded with the biz already, earnestly introducing one song with the deathless line, “This is about the music industry.” The one thing he can’t do very well right now is sing, mainly because his voice sounds like it’s in the process of breaking.
So how do they compare with my fictional Hornets? I must admit that my imagination didn’t stretch to making a bunch of lads in their early teens quite as skilful and polished as Aaron and co. Des, the Hornets’ leader, is certainly talented and pretty sure of himself, but I never pictured him as being that good – and he’s already older at the start of the story than Aaron is now. It’s quite mind-boggling, really. Check him out for yourself if you don’t believe me.
The gig did confirm one thing I got right, though. I wanted the book to demonstrate that there is something about the blues that gives it a timeless, universal appeal – so why shouldn’t a group of boys growing up in Watford in the early 60s want to play this music? The fact that a boy from Oxford like Aaron Keylock is following the same path in 2012 is further proof that the blues will never die. The torch just gets passed on from one generation to the next.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
The illiterate guide
Having finally bought myself an iPhone, I popped into WH Smith yesterday and picked up one of several guides to the device that were on sale there. I now wish I’d spent a bit longer making my choice, because The Ultimate Beginners’ Guide to iPhone (even the title is slightly off-kilter) is without doubt the most poorly-written commercial publication I have ever seen.
Even just skimming the first few pages on the train home, I spotted several typos: ‘sinked’ for ‘synced’, ‘piece of mind’, ‘fore more see page 37’... Further tell-tale signs of illiteracy soon revealed themselves; ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ used interchangably, commas and hyphens either used wrongly, or omitted when they were needed, and of course the grievous overuse of exclamation marks.
Above all, the English is just appalling. Take this sentence: “Amazing seems to little of word to describe it’s performance!” What’s amazing is how many errors the writer has managed to cram into 10 words - errors a GCSE student would be ashamed of. The whole guide reads as if it’s been hurriedly translated from a foreign language, or written by a non-native speaker, and I suspect one of these is the real explanation. Either that, or James Gale (named and shamed as Editor on the contents page) and his colleagues at Black Dog Media are just rubbish at English - which makes publishing a spectacularly poor career choice for them.
I’ve spent much of my career as a sub-editor, so I take bad writing personally (not to mention the fact that I spent £8.99 on this piece of illiterate garbage). But there’s more to it than that. The real issue here is that this is supposed to be a technical guide; if the authors can’t spell simple English words correctly, why should I trust them when they’re giving me instructions on how to set up my iPhone, or listing technical specifications or statistics? It’s bad enough wherever it crops up, but in non-fiction in particular, poor spelling and writing undermines the entire enterprise.
Even just skimming the first few pages on the train home, I spotted several typos: ‘sinked’ for ‘synced’, ‘piece of mind’, ‘fore more see page 37’... Further tell-tale signs of illiteracy soon revealed themselves; ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ used interchangably, commas and hyphens either used wrongly, or omitted when they were needed, and of course the grievous overuse of exclamation marks.
Above all, the English is just appalling. Take this sentence: “Amazing seems to little of word to describe it’s performance!” What’s amazing is how many errors the writer has managed to cram into 10 words - errors a GCSE student would be ashamed of. The whole guide reads as if it’s been hurriedly translated from a foreign language, or written by a non-native speaker, and I suspect one of these is the real explanation. Either that, or James Gale (named and shamed as Editor on the contents page) and his colleagues at Black Dog Media are just rubbish at English - which makes publishing a spectacularly poor career choice for them.
I’ve spent much of my career as a sub-editor, so I take bad writing personally (not to mention the fact that I spent £8.99 on this piece of illiterate garbage). But there’s more to it than that. The real issue here is that this is supposed to be a technical guide; if the authors can’t spell simple English words correctly, why should I trust them when they’re giving me instructions on how to set up my iPhone, or listing technical specifications or statistics? It’s bad enough wherever it crops up, but in non-fiction in particular, poor spelling and writing undermines the entire enterprise.
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Don’t give up the day job
It seems that you can’t open the Guardian (or rather, the Books section of the Guardian website) these days without reading another depressing article about the future (or lack of one) for books and, as a result, authors.
A couple of weeks ago, Sam Leith wrote about how the Kindle was killing off the printed book and examined some of the implications. A week later, Ewan Morrison asked Are books dead, and can authors survive? The answers are, respectively, “not yet, but they will be soon”, and “no”. I don’t think that counts as a spoiler.
As I wrote a few months ago, this is a depressing time for someone like me who always dreamed of being a professional writer. When I was growing up, there appeared to be something approaching a career path for novelists. You write some short stories, some of which get published in magazines; you start to get a reputation, which means that when you send the manuscript of your first novel to agents, they’ve heard of you and take the trouble to read it; an agent takes you under their wing and gets you a modest advance for that debut novel; and, over the years, the advances increase in tandem with your sales.
Of course, I’m sure it was never quite that easy. I also suspect that my education didn’t help; my school, and then my university, were places where it was pretty much taken for granted that you would achieve great things in whatever field you decided to apply your talents to. Indeed, I shared a German translation class with a girl called Joanne Harris, who has had an immensely successful career as a writer, with 11 novels published to date.
She’s one of the lucky ones; the last generation of novelists who will have the support network of a major publishing house behind them. For the rest of us, self-publishing, possibly combined with one of the new-tech ideas discussed by Sam Leith, looks like the best bet. But the prospects of finding a mass audience, let alone making enough money to write full-time, are bleak.
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