Alison Booth's Blog, page 4

Comparing book prices

Ever noticed the huge variation in book prices across bookstores and across countries? Wondered if you might do better with your book purchases if only you had the time to search across suppliers yourself? Asked yourself how you can track down books that weren’t published in the last couple of months? Here’s an Australian site that will do the searching for you:https://booko.com.auBooko’s mission statement says this:‘Booko is a site with a very simple goal - to find the cheapest place to buy books & DVDs. This site started out as a personal itch and has slowly grown into a very handy site, slowly adding more shops for comparison and more features to make it easier to use.’The bookshops searched are not only in Australia but are all over the world. Booko began sourcing books from just a few bookstores in 2007 and has expanded so that it can now search 64 online stores that are located all around the world. It calculates the shipping cost to your home country, converts the price into your own currency, and ranks the data from cheapest to the most expensive.While Booko has been going for some time, I’ve only just come across it and I have a friend to thank for the introduction.It’s great for writers, who are often asked where their books can be purchased: they can direct readers to Booko.It’s great for readers, who want to know which book supplier offers the book or the e-book at the best price.Of course if you’re looking for a newly published book and you’re lucky enough to still have a vibrant bookstore near you, you might not want to go down this route. After all, local bookshops need all the help they can get in these times of rapidly changing technology.But if you’re looking for a book that wasn’t published in the last few months or if you don’t have a local bookstore near you, you may have to go online for your book purchases. And with the summer holiday season fast approaching, now is a terrific time to learn where to buy your books at the best price. Happy browsing!

Why Empathy Matters and How Reading Can Develop It

Empathy helps us enjoy the arts and form strong friendships. We are often told that reading fiction and watching drama – be it film or television or theatre – can develop our moral imaginations and help us better understand ourselves and people around us. Empathy not only assists us form working theories of how individuals tick – the ‘theory of the mind’ – but it also helps us understand how people work in groups and allows us to make predictions about group behaviour. Thereby we may become more socially adept.But how can we tell this? Empathetic people may gravitate naturally to reading fiction. So simple correlations between reading and measured empathy may not be picking up causation but simply reflect selection. In other words, although more socially adept people read more, the reading they do hasn’t made them this way. They were innately that way inclined to begin with.So what is the evidence that reading fiction affect our personalities? Is empathy innate or can it be developed, as has been suggested from the time of the earliest Greek dramatists and philosophers?It will come as no surprise that psychologists are addressing themselves to these questions. There is space here to mention only two studies. The first is that of Keith Oatey and his colleagues at Berkeley University in the US.In their study, the authors randomly assigned 166 individuals to read either a short story or an account of the same story written in a non-fiction format. Before having participants read the text, and afterwards, the experimenters measured readers’ personalities using a standard personality test. Here is how Oatey summarises their findings:‘The literary story was “The Lady with the Little Dog,” by Anton Chekhov, who is generally acknowledged as the world’s greatest short story writer. It is about Dmitri Gomov, and a lady, Anna Sergueyevna, whom he sees walking with her little dog. They are both alone, on vacation at a seaside resort. They are both married to other people, but they begin an affair. At the end of their vacation they part. But their feelings for each other grow, and both are shocked to discover how much more important these feelings are than anything else in their lives. They encounter many difficulties, and overcome some of them. The story ends with this: “… their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning.”‘The version in a non-fiction format was written by Djikic as a courtroom report of divorce proceedings. It has the same characters and events, and some of the words, of Chekhov’s story. It is the same length and reading difficulty. Importantly, the readers of the non-fictional account reported that they found it just as interesting, though not as artistic, as Chekhov’s story.‘We found that the personality traits of readers of Chekhov’s story changed more than those of the readers of the courtroom account. The changes in personality were not large, but they were measurable. They were different from the changes of belief spurred by a piece of writing meant to be   persuasive, which tend to be all in the same direction as intended by the   writer. Instead, Chekhov’s readers changed in different directions, with each change unique to the particular reader, mediated by the emotions that each individual felt while reading.‘Why? We believe that as people read Chekhov’s story, they experienced empathy with the protagonists and identified with them so that each reader, in his or her own way, became a bit more like them, or decided not to think in the same ways as the characters. When we read “The Lady with the Little Dog,” we can be both ourselves and Gomov or Anna. Through stories, selfhood can expand.See:http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/chaning_our_mindsOther psychologists have begun to investigate whether reading literary fiction and reading genre fiction might have different effects on readers’ empathy. Emanuele Castano and David Kidd conducted a study to explore this. (The results were published in Science on 4 October 2013, and also reported inThe Scientific Americanin October 2013:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-reading-literary-fiction-improves-empathy/). The authors found that reading literary fiction had a significant positive effect on empathy (measured using psychologists’ standard tests) but that reading non-literary fiction had no effect.So modern psychologists seem to agree that those Greek dramatists and philosophers of 2,000 years ago got things right. Measured by the criterion of empathy development, reading quality fiction is good for you.

Flashbacks in Fiction

Ask any writer or publisher of fiction for their opinion on flashbacks in novels and you'll get a variety of responses. There will be a common theme however: that flashbacks should be used only sparingly. You’ll likely be told that flashbacks slow down the flow of the story, that by introducing flashbacks too early you lose all forward momentum, and that the inclusion of flashbacks will confuse the reader.Of course everyone knows that the past - and decisions made in the past - have later outcomes but usually in novels thepresentis driving the action. The inclusion of backstory can stop the forward momentum that the real story needs and result in the loss of the reader’s interest.There are instances where a flashback is of great value. It can add depth and texture to a story and it can contribute to the reader's understanding of character. The general consensus of countless writing blogs are that a flashback should be brief and that is should be included only to advance the plot.But some novelists have used flashbacks extensively to brilliant effect. One example isAll the Birds, Singing, by the Australian and English writer, Evie Wyld. This book has two interspersed parallel narratives concerning the main character, Jake. There is a ‘front story’ in real time and a ‘back story’ that starts relatively recently and moves further and further back in time, revealing eventually how Jake ended up in the isolated location of the front story. This is a powerful device that introduces great narrative tension.AsDavid Hebblethwaite writes in his reviewhttp://shinynewbooks.co.uk/fiction02/all-the-birds-singing-by-evie-wyld/:“Wyld works with two parallel narratives which remain separate but nevertheless reflect and illuminate each other – and that’s not simply because they chronicle stages in the same character’s life. Wyld highlights the contrasts and similarities between the environments in which Jake finds herself: she’s looking after sheep in both, and doing so is (to an extent) a means for her to escape the past. But the sheep station is a very different place from the island: life in the former, with its workers arriving from all over, is transitory; the latter feels much more like Jake’s attempt to build a permanent life for herself. That impression is underlined by the use of different tenses: Jake’s narration on the island is in the past tense, while her flashbacks are in the present tense – so the chronological present feels more stable than what (for Jake) has already happened.”The backwards structure keeps up the tension as the reader becomes desperate to know what happened. In other ways, Wyld’s book is relatively simple. It is the point of view of one main character, and it is relatively simple plot that has been made more complex and compelling by the structure.A second example of a recent novel in which the author has used flashbacks to brilliant effect isAll the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, the US-based novelist.As William t. Vollmann writes in theNew York Times(seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/books/review/all-the-light-we-cannot-see-by-anthony-doerr.html)“Told mostly in the present tense, in short and usually pointed chapters, the story moves briskly and efficiently toward its climactic encounter during the Allied bombing of St.-Malo, France, a couple of months after D-Day. Although the narrative consists largely of flashbacks, it’s easy to follow because it focuses most sharply on only two characters, the blind child ­Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who takes part in the French Resistance, and the very Aryan-looking Werner Pfennig, a technocratic private in the service of the Thousand-Year Reich.”The reader may be able to come up with more examples of innovative and compelling novel is where flashbacks have been used to great effect.And it’s worth remembering about advice on writing literature: the rules are there to be useful but they are also there to be broken.

Australian Fiction and the Vietnam War

​​The Vietnam War is sometimes termed a forgotten war. Neglected by Australian literature until relatively recently, it seems it was the war that most of us wanted to forget. The last and most prolonged proxy battle of the Cold War, it saw Australians become increasingly divided. Should the country be at war at all, or had it been manipulated into involvement by its political leaders? Did people have the right to take to the streets and protest about the war? And just how far was the security intelligence organization prepared to go to silence the protesters?These issues offer endless possibilities for writers of fiction and yet they have been little used. I searched online for and found the following listing on many Australian bookstores’ websites (I randomly chose Booktopia to illustrate):http://www.booktopia.com.au/books-online/fiction/action-adventure/war-combat-fiction/vietnam-war-fiction/cFJMV-p1.htmlYou will see that these novels are largely by American male writers. However, recently a few Australian writers have set novels in which the Vietnam War plays an important role. For example, three Australian novels, set partially or fully against the background of the Vietnam War, areAfter the Fire,A Still Small Voice, by Evie Wyld;A Distant Land, by Alison Booth; andSummer's Gone, by Charles Hall. None of these three novels can be found when searching the website for “Australian Fiction and the Vietnam War.”I find this puzzling. After all, the 1960s to early 1970s were a dramatic period in terms not only of peace marches and civil rights movement, but also of internal and external security, and security-agency monitoring of the general population.  These issues resonate today. Australia is involved in what many see as a prolonged and probably unwinnable war, this time in the Middle East. Globally, people have since the Arab Spring taken to the streets to protest, sometimes with disastrous consequences.  And there remain – over forty years after our withdrawal from Vietnam – those trade-offs between surveillance and security on the one hand, and personal liberty on the other, that Australians are battling with today.Perhaps it will take more time before novelists find the Vietnam War period appealing. Perhaps it will also take time before publishers do as well. Maybe too many people remember that period with distaste, and we will have to wait until the next generation wants to read historical fiction in which the Vietnam War features before we will see much Australian literature dealing with it. And when that time comes, there is a terrific history that is invaluable for research of that period. It is the volume by Paul Ham, entitledVietnam: The Australian War.

What’s in a name? On choosing the title of a book

Does the title of your book matter? Yes, it most certainly does. But is the author the person best qualified to choose it? Not in my experience.I gave my first novel a series of titles. The first was ‘The Refugees’ but my family soon persuaded me that this made the book sound like an academic tome. So I replaced it by ‘The Reffoes’ and beavered on. Weeks later I inserted into the text of  the novel (set in the shire of Wilba Wilba) one of those signs you see as you drive through the countryside: ‘Welcome to Wilba Wilba’. Loving the irony of that word ‘welcome’, I changed the title to what was on this sign.But this was not to stay.In due course my agent sent the manuscript to Random House Australia. My contract with them was for two books: ‘Welcome to Wilba Wilba’ and a second book with the sexy title of ‘Untitled Book 2’.After I signed the contract, the to-ing and fro-ing on titles began. The publisher and I started poles apart – but we converged quickly toStillwater Creek. And I learned something, and it is this: publishers have an excellent feel for titles and it makes sense to take note of what they suggest.This manner of doing things was a stark contrast to what happens in academia. I work in a field where journal articles are the norm, and no editor has ever retitled any of my pieces. My ‘entitling’ experience with publishing a novel was closer to the labelling of the op-ed pieces I’ve contributed to various newspapers. For these, I simply provide a descriptive title knowing full well that the editor is far more likely than me to come up with something punchyThe naming of my second novel was straightforward. Although it began its life as ‘Untitled Book 2’, I changed it to ‘Jingera Revisited’ while I was working on it. When I handed the completed manuscript over to my lovely publisher, she quickly and tactfully ushered the title ‘Jingera Revisited’ out the door. She and I then agreed on the new title –The Indigo Sky– and also on the book’s cover.Then came the third novel, the last in the Jingera Trilogy. The contract for this simply stated ‘Jingera Book 3’. Again I didn't spend much time thinking about the title, although I did want a tree on the cover. A strangler fig features in the narrative (think of one of those fig trees you see in pictures of the Cambodian jungle).  Again my publisher and I easily agreed, this time onThe Memory Tree.  We checked if this title was in use and it wasn’t. So it went forward and was approved, and the cover was designed.Then shock, horror! A matter of days before the book was to be printed someone at Random House publishers saw, on the Allen and Unwin website, another about-to-be released novel of the same name, by Tess Evans. (This sort of coincidence is by no means uncommon.) The publisher and I spent a day flicking email suggestions back and forth and we agreed by the late afternoon onA Distant Land. In the end we decided that this suits the novel better, but we got there by a series of accidents.From these experiences I have drawn three pieces of advice.First, don't spend too much time on the title. When you get a publisher you will get good suggestions.Second, always make sure you are consulted. Before signing, check the clauses in your contract for something like "the publisher agrees to consult with the author…". It is your work, after all. And a novel is not like a newspaper op-ed. You should be entitled to veto your novel’s title if you hate it.Third, make sure you keep searching the web for about-to-be released titles. Think how awful it would be if your book were to be released immediately after publication of another book with the same title.

Striking a Pose: Or What to Consider When Presenting your Public Face

[image error]Have you ever had to find a photo of yourself, maybe to put on your work webpage or to go on the cover of a newsletter or a book? Here’s a conjecture: that men choose a masculine pose and women choose a feminine pose. Check out a few organisations’ websites. You’ll find it’s true. Now that’s not so surprising, is it? Everyone wants to look as good as possible when they present a public face to the world. But do they also want to present a picture of themselves that follows the prevailing gender identity? It would seem they do. It could be because of their own implicit values and identity, or because they’re encouraged to do so by their publisher or organisation.Individuals are strongly affected by social custom and conditioning. A society's expectations about how each gender should behave can result in a loss of identity if we see others deviate from that code. Analogously we experience a loss of identity if we ourselves deviate. This acts as a kind of sanction ensuring the code is perpetuated.  Women are expected to show their feminine side – even in high-ranking positions (think of Margaret Thatcher, Julia Gillard, Hilary Clinton). And even on the dust jackets of their books.Here’s an interesting viewpoint from Amanda Filipacchi, writing in theNew York Times.  Distressed by what she viewed as an overly feminine cover to her new novel,The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty, she decided to counteract this by providing a severe author picture. She writes:“I made an appointment with the great author photographer Marion Ettlinger. On the phone, I told her I wanted to look stern, severe, strict — possibly standing against a white wall, maybe wearing a black cloak or something. “Like a headmistress?” she asked. “Yes, exactly!” I said, thrilled that she understood.‘Two days before the shoot, I flipped through a book of Ms. Ettlinger’s photos to get a sense of how authors typically dressed for their portraits. I made a startling discovery: The male and female authors posed differently. The men looked simpler, more straightforward. The women looked dreamy, often gazing off into the distance. Their limbs were sometimes entwined, like vines.“I decided that I wanted to pose like a man. I also thought: No wonder books by women don’t get reviewed as often as those by men. Maybe it was the poses. I made a mental note to alert VIDA, the wonderful organization that tracks gender imbalance in the literary world with tallies that fill me with despair. Of course, I’m mostly kidding. I doubt that female author poses are to blame for the inequalities in how many books by men get reviewed in respectable publications versus books by women. But it couldn’t hurt to cover my bases and pose like a man anyway.”There are tradeoffs, of course. So used are we to the general niceness of women that we sometimes interpret severity in women as anger or aggression. Further in her very funny article, Amanda Filipacchi writes:“Midway through the session Ms. Ettlinger said, “You look like a member of a gang of female mountain warriors.” I took this as a compliment…”“I believe that this unconscious prejudice against women, which is extremely strong in the literary world, is present in almost everyone, including in those of us who object to it the most vehemently. I know that I even detect it in myself, sometimes. That’s why I didn’t want to make things even more difficult for my novel by saddling it with a feminine cover or girlie author photo.”The full text of Amanda Filipacchi’s article can be found at:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/how-to-pose-like-a-man.html?smid=pl-share&_r=3Here is a link to an opinion piece on gender identity I wrote in 2013 for Al Jazeera:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/20133261078247599.html

Reviewing Books

Not long after I became an academic, more years ago than I care to remember, I was invited for the first time to review a book in my field by the editor of a US journal. It was an exciting and daunting prospect, for which we’d received no training in my PhD program. But it turned out that this didn’t matter: the book-review editor of the journal sent detailed guidelines with the volume. The advice that stuck in my mind most vividly was the following: that it takes many months – more often, years – to write a book, and that a reviewer’s task is to appreciate the author’s goals, to evaluate the book by how well it achieves these, and above all to be conscious of one’s own biases for and against the book’s approach.This was wise advice. I was reminded of it recently when reading an essay forOverlandby the Australian novelist Kirsten Tranter. In it, she writes of publishing her first novel:“I was only able to send out my manuscript after accepting that it wasn’t perfect and that it didn’t match my idealised image of the book in my head, even though it was as complete and polished as I could make it. In a statement that has been turned into a relentless meme, Samuel Beckett says, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Any sane writer understands exactly what he means. Failing better is as good as it gets.”“That was something I had already learnt in academia but had to learn all over again, since my creative work felt so much more personal. I had to learn it as a reviewer, too. Publishing any kind of writing involves this difficult acceptance.”Further in her essay, she writes:“Being a writer involves intense and maddening dichotomies. The work of writing requires isolation and withdrawal from the world, a retreat into obsession, both in the act of writing and in the months and years of deep imaginative work while the book takes mental shape. It is a job for an introvert. The process of publishing requires a schizoid opposite, as the work that has been nurtured in the safe, protected space of the computer (or the notebook or the typewritten page) is turned into a commodity…”But that is only the first step – a major step, but there are bigger ones lying ahead.“[W]ith the reviews, comes a different experience: what was produced in seclusion had become subject to public scrutiny. Like any writer, I hoped for good reviews, although like any reasonable writer I was sharply aware of the imperfections of my book. I expected to be thrilled by any positive critical assessments if they came, and hoped that I wouldn’t disgust myself by becomingly too egotistically bound up with them. I expected to be disappointed by bad reviews if they came, though I believed I would be good at handling criticism. I thought the glow of acceptance from publishers around the world would insulate me from negative reviews.“What surprised me most was how excruciating it was to be reviewed at all… The other surprising thing was how difficult it was to read the bad reviews, or the negative parts of the mixed reviews. I had seriously overestimated my ability to deal with criticism; ten years of rigorous study and critique in graduate school had not prepared me for what public criticism would be like. I disappointed myself, and still do, with my painful sensitivity. Like many writers, I am shockingly insecure, a symptom that goes oddly hand in hand with the monstrous vanity that declares one’s own work good enough to be read and bought and sold and discussed by others.”Kirsten Tranter has written her essay with welcome honesty. My guess is that the views she has expressed are held by many published authors.  They are certainly what I felt when my own novels were reviewed.It would be nice if book-review editors could send her essay to the readers who are invited to review books, and to remind them that it takes many months – more often, years – to write a book and get it published. A reviewer’s task is to appreciate the author’s goals, to evaluate the book by how well it achieves these, and above all to be conscious of any biases the reviewer might possess for and against the book’s approach.The full text of Kirsten Tranter’s essay, entitled ‘Go, little book’, can be found at:https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-217/feature-kirsten-tranter/

Why Writers Should Read

Should you read if you want to write? Maybe you’ve been told that reading someone else’s work will stifle your unique voice. If they have, don’t you believe it. It’s much more difficult to write good novels if you don’t read fiction.Once you’re a writer, you realise how much more you have to learn. Reading a book – any book – becomes more than an escape. You read not to copy but to absorb, and to become more analytical about the craft.Read good books, ordinary books – and perhaps even a few bad books – and see what you gain from the experience. Inevitably the way a writer reads a novel will differ from the way a non-writer reads a novel. Of course as a writer you’ll still be looking for distraction and a journey into another world, but you’ll also be refining your technical skills. Does this spoil the reading experience? No. It deepens it as you become more alert to the tricks that other writers use, and sometimes to their sheer brilliance.Be tempted outside your usual sphere of interest and you might have some wonderful surprises. I love being lent or given books by friends I trust. That way you’re introduced to novelists whom you mightn’t have come across before. Recently a friend recommended Anthony Doerr’s book,All the Light We Cannot See, a novel with an innovative structure, beautifully crafted language, and a plot that blew me away.Before I became a writer, I used to feel really annoyed if I bought a book and found I couldn’t finish it. Now I’m rather less bothered. When you’re about to chuck a book into the recycling bin, stop for a moment and consider. Was it poor characterisation that made you want to hurl the book away? Was it because there was no tension and no narrative drive? Was it all tell (Joe did this, then he did that…) and no show? Was the clunky dialogue a turnoff, or the trite descriptions? Did a shifting point of view irritate or confuse you?Sometimes I reread books that I’ve enjoyed in the past, and find I’ve become more alert as to why I love them. Do you find you’re pulled in by the original use of language? The plotting? The characters? The framing incidents? The humour? Is the structure of the book linear, or is it shifting about in time? And which do you prefer? Or perhaps it’s the variation in sentence length or rhythm that appeals. Or a combination of all of these factors.If you’re driven to write, enjoy it – and the related reading – to the full. One of the joys of being a writer is that you can tell people that you’re working when you’re lying on the couch reading a novel.And you are, aren’t you?This is a significantly revised version of my 2013 post athttp://writingnovelsinaustralia.com/2013/03/05/why-writers-should-read-by-alison-booth/

Three Perspectives on “Write What You Know”

All writers are familiar with the adage “write what you know”. But what does it actually mean? Should it be taken literally? Or does it mean write with empathy, write from the heart, write from what you have experienced as well as from what you wish to experience?This week’s blog posts excerpts from published articles on this topic by Bret Anthony Johnston inThe Atlanticin 2011, and by Zoe Heller and Mohsin Hamid in theNew York Timesin March this year.Bret Anthony Johnston:“…fiction is an act of courage and humility, a protest against our mortality, and we, the authors, don’t matter. What matters is our characters, those constructions of imagination that can transcend our biases and agendas, our egos and entitlements and flesh. Trust your powers of empathy and invention, I say. Trust the example of the authors you love to read—Flaubert: “Emma,c’est moi”—and trust that your craft, when braided with compassion, will produce stories that matter both to you and to readers you’ve never met.”Zoe Heller:“I was in grade school when I first encountered the adage about writing what you know. It concluded my teacher’s tactful comments on a story I had written about an 18th-century highwayman. Stung by her tepid response, I rejected the advice out of hand. How ludicrous, I thought. How limiting! What about science fiction? What about fantasy? What about any writing that travels beyond the borders of the author’s sex or race or age?Several decades on, the agony of my teacher’s criticism has somewhat abated, and I can see a little more of what she was driving at.The first mistake I made as a schoolgirl was to assume I was being asked to write exclusively about things that had happened to me. In fact, the injunction is only to know; the business of how you come by your knowledge is left quite open. You can mine your own life, yes. But you can also sympathetically observe other people’s experiences. You can read and research. And you can use your imagination. What good writers know about their subjects is usually drawn from some combination of these sources. The problem with my highwayman story, it seems safe to say, was that I had drawn on none of them. It didn’t necessarily matter that I had never robbed a stagecoach. But it did matter that I had not troubled myself to find out, or even partially imagine, anything about what robbing a stagecoach might entail.The other, subtler error I made — and continued to make for a long time afterward — was to suppose that translating experiential knowledge into fiction was a simple, straightforward, even banal business. For most writers, it actually takes a lot of hard work and many false starts before they are in a position to extract what is most valuable and interesting from their autobiographies.”Mohsin Hamid:Mohsin Hamid suggests that: “It may be that the DNA of fiction is, like our own DNA, a double helix, a two-stranded beast. One strand is born of what writers have experienced. The other is born of what writers wish to experience, of the impulse to writein orderto know.Fiction comes into existence when these two strands are knitted together…In my own writing, I am aware of combining both strands. When asked, I usually say I don’t do much research for my fiction, I just live my life. ..But I also write about things I haven’t experienced. I’ve written from the point of view of a woman, of a global surveillance system, of a writer who is being beheaded. I write these things because I want to transcend my experiences. I want to go beyond myself. Writing isn’t just my mirror, it’s my astral projection device. I suspect it’s like that for most of us.In the end, what we know isn’t a static commodity. It changes from being written about. Storytelling alters the storyteller. And a story is altered by being told.”Bret Anthony Johnston’s article can be found athttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/dont-write-what-you-know/308576/ The opinion pieces by Zoe Heller and Mohsin Hamid can be found at:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/write-what-you-know-helpful-advice-or-idle-cliche.html?_r=0

Coping With Rejection And Criticism As A Novelist

You’ve spent months – or more likely years – writing your novel. You did all your homework before sending the manuscript or a few sample chapters to an agent. You checked that the sub-genre in which you’re writing isn’t overloaded and that another novel just like yours hasn’t just been published. You had your typescript read by kind but critical people whose judgement you trust – and maybe you’ve also let an appraisal agency take a look at it – and you took into account most of their comments. You went through your draft again and verified that the first few chapters are as captivating as possible, in order to pull the busy agent or publisher in. You checked that the plotlines are compelling, the characters plausible and interesting, and that there’s narrative tension and lots of conflict to get the reader flipping over the pages.
Yet, in spite of doing all of this, you still get a rejection. You think your novel’s good, every bit as good as those you see stacked up in the bookshops. So how can you deal with that email message or letter saying the agent doesn’t want to represent you or the publisher doesn’t want to publish you?
Reach for the bottle by all means, but stop after a couple of glasses and remind yourself of the enormous diversity of tastes. Opinions about manuscripts are hugely subjective. One person may love it and another hate it. Not only is there a wide variety of tastes and preferences, but there are also fashion trends. Maybe the publisher has other novels in the pipeline a bit like yours. Perhaps the marketing team is breathing down the publisher’s neck, so that even if she likes your novel she won’t think of putting it in front of the acquisitions committee unless it’s really novel (pardon the pun) and marketable.
What’s the next step in dealing with this? First, read through your manuscript again. A bit of time will have elapsed, so you’ll be able to see it more objectively. Can it be improved? If not – if the novel’s as near to perfection as you can make it – try another agent. If the second agent rejects you, work through the entire list of agents. (For example, see the listings in The Australian Writer’s Marketplace.)
If you’re still unsuccessful, put the manuscript away in a safe place. You can return to it later if you wish. Remind yourself that many great novelists have been unable to publish their first few novels. Think of Peter Carey whose third novel was the first he published. He hasn’t looked back, has he?
Now begin a new novel. Something completely different. Something you’re driven to write. It will make you forget about the first. Remind yourself that writing is a craft with a long apprenticeship. And remind yourself that, while the book industry in a state of turmoil at the moment, publishers are still looking around for new authors.
Suppose that now you’ve got lucky and found an agent and a publisher. You sit back and you think the days of rejection are over. You buy a bottle of bubbly and have a glass or five to celebrate.
Enjoy this period to the full. For the days of rejection and not over and they never will be. Someone will read your beautiful new novel and not like it. Okay, most people will love it, but there’ll always be one or two who won’t, and who may be very vocal about it for whatever reason. What can you do?
Ignore the adverse reactions (unless you think you might learn something from them). Remember that some novelists never read reviews. Remind yourself that opinions about novels are subjective. Focus on the good comments. Focus on the pleasure you’ve brought to many readers. Focus on the enjoyment you get from writing.
And then move onto the next project.

Notes: This blog first appeared at http://writingnovelsinaustralia.com/2...