The Workroom/info ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tree-based reading material exchange

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:24:47 +0100

They may soon become museum fodder, but while we still have them, here’s a great way books can be kept in circulation among discerning users. For me, certain of my books, mostly those collected in a 20 year period from the mid 80s - when I got very keen on literature and started to write creatively - will probably stay on my shelves. Serving more of an interior decorative function than a store for reference. Here’s the Green Metropolis blurb:

Books can’t be recycled in the same way as newspapers and magazines, however, they can be recycled in a very sustainable way! You simply need to ensure that they stay in circulation by finding them a new home. By doing this you're not only helping the environment, you're also increasing the pleasure a good book can give and doing your bit for charity - for every book sold, we donate 5p to the Woodland Trust!

All books priced at £3.75 and you get £3.00 for every one you sell, with 5p going to the Woodland Trust to grow more trees with.

Write jazz

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:14:17 +0100

This entry on Phil Barrow’s Jobbing Scriptwriter blog is like an extended bebop riff, an outburst of controlled anger directed at moaning scriptwriters who complain about their lot. It makes a lot of sense, as this sample paragraph demonstrates:
“6. Nobody will give me a break
Fuck you, why should they? Make your own breaks. You may well be a competent, engaging writer with an interesting voice and something to say. Chances are you fall short on one or more of these things; but I can guarantee, with mathematical certainty, YOU ARE NOT AN UNDISCOVERED GENIUS WHOSE WORK IS BEING IGNORED.”

JG writes like Dan Brown

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:22:50 +0100

Writers influence writers and often we get going because we are inspired by a particular style an author uses and feel we can say what we want to say using a similar approach. I’m pretty sure that literary writing is pretty much all about finding a language that matches our thoughts and emotions to style, and all style is about is entering into a relationship with preceding literature. So this writing analyzer friends have been playing with throws up some interesting questions for me. It claims to tell you which famous writer you write like, using statistical data based on your word choice and writing style. Of course, I couldn’t resist it. I’m keen to know about my predecessors and though I think I know who they are, there might be some surprise influences at work. So I pasted in some passages of a short story of mine called Cool Business (which is linked to off my Info page) and it told me I write like the North American David Foster Wallace. The interesting thing here is, I’ve never read him and what’s more, he wasn’t known in this country until the late 90s after his breakthrough novel Infinite Jest came out. Which was after I wrote the story. So, were we channelling similar influences? Quite probably. At the time I was reading, and always have read, a lot of North American literature and at the time felt I was most channeling T Coraghessan Boyle, whose short stories were beginning to appear in the UK. So, maybe it was a style - quite condensed, realist, speech-driven, and with a pacy narrative thrust that is quite close up to character - that we were both interested in. But then I pasted in some non-fiction (Re-imagining Archie, also linked to off of the Info page) and it told me I wrote like Stephen King. Stephen King. Now Stephen King is not someone I would’ve thought was any influence. For one thing I’ve only ever read one book by him and that was years ago, and the last thing about him that I have regard for is his style, which I remember I found unremarkable. King is the kind of writer who is interested in story. He’s not a stylist. So, perhaps that’s it. In a piece of factual writing I end up like Stephen King. Fair enough. Then I pasted in some of the text of JG Ballard’s last ever story that was published in the Guardian last year and it came back with Dan Brown. JG Ballard writes like Dan Brown? Maybe, but also maybe it’s not a too accurate device.

80% of records just noise - writers can learn

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:29:29 +0100

“But the premise of technology being the great democratizer and allowing more artists to break through than before — actually, we’ve seen the opposite effect. Fewer artists are breaking than ever before, and fewer artists who are doing it themselves are breaking through than ever before.”

This discussion about the music business in the age of computer programmes and internet downloading is enlightening. It's main conclusion is that even though access to making and distributing music is now much more democratic, in that it is open to more people, it doesn't necessarily lead to the best music getting heard and the best musicians finding a professional career.

The lessons for writers, slowly catching up with the models developed over the last decade by musicians, are worth drawing out. Mostly writing on the internet is silent noise (in the head). Curating it for specific interest groups remains a vital task, and one that is probably as of much importance at the moment as the creation of good literature for the medium. As we move through a major change in how text is distributed (the huge uptake in iPads is a critical turn) the main task of writers remains to make the work the best it can be.

This is about integrity to the art form we work in, whether that be poetry, short fiction, long fiction, creative non-fiction, performance, rap etc or whatever hybrid or new forms emerge. That's why it is important to have good editors and publishers who care.

But, in a period of deep ongoing change, are the old school gatekeepers worth trusting? Have they proved themselves up to it? There are vested interests at stake. There are class and sectional prejudices at work. There are bottom line financial considerations too. What is worth it and what is not is actually not decided by anyone with a purely objective understanding.

Our online literary culture needs a commitment to the new possibilities from writers, editors and publishers, united in finding, nurturing and curating artistic quality.

Tribal affiliations and psychic maturity

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:01:06 +0100

As we wait for the tedious inevitability of Spanish tikki takka stifling the Dutch on Sunday (though if Wesley Sneijder can do what he did to seven of these players in destroying Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, then there's a chance of an upset) here's some posts about socialism and football that have been appearing during the World Cup.

John Barnes on England’s lack of proletarian unity.

Terry Eagleton, surely having a laugh with this rusty old left analysis.

K-punk getting utopian in this moving essay.

And this and the comments section from the brilliant Minus the Shooting blog.

Though, for me, a point is surely being missed in these obviously playful arguments. Football fandom is essentially about the projection of pre-rational needs (to feel powerful, to beat a rival tribe) onto a representative body of hired mercenaries (whether for club or country). We indulge our urges from the safety of a seat in a stadium or, more likely, our sofas. At best we can use this obviously limited pastime to grow beyond such concerns. We can observe the absurdity of our emotional lack, try to incorporate such feelings into a more complete psychic unity (one-ness) rendering them harmless and eventually starving them of energy. Socialism can never be about the collective indulgence of tribal affiliations, not according to one of its founding fathers, Engels, who would remind us that its eventual purpose is to enable people to: “not only feel but also know their oneness with nature” and, therefore oneness with all fellow humans without need to triumph over others. And to overcome “the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body”. Socialists have to at least try to live like that now, and not wait for the utopian future to arrive. Not saying we should give up the obvious delights of watching and playing competitive sport, just that we can’t graft higher purposes onto simplistic diversions. Ultimately we need to grow beyond attachment to such identifications.

(quotes from The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Apes to Man, 1876.)