Laurie Graham's Blog, page 17

Here I sit, waiting to tie up any loose ends with The Early Birds. The publishing house wheels are grinding slow and the typescript is out for copy-editing before the editor has finished her final structural edit, which is not at all how things should be but hey, nobody asked me. The trouble is I find it impossible to pitch the next book when there is still unfinished business on my desk. I’m not a fastidious worker but a new project requires a major psychological shift. I’m still pondering whether I was right to kill off…… oh, no, that’d be telling.

My days are occupied with faffing. This has enabled me to stock my cupboard with more fruit vodkas than I can ever decently drink so I guess there are going to be a few gift-wrapped bottles under certain Christmas trees.

And speaking of gift-wrapped, please tell me, dear faithful readers, what (apart from a new book, dammit) you most like to get from your favourite authors. Do you like giveaways? Do you like bonus material relating to books you already read? Short stories?  Let me know. Because I am informed by one of my daughters  –  she who uses spreadsheets  – that Christmas is coming.

I’ve almost finished faffing with The Early Birds. Peggy has been granted a bit of love interest (credible, I hope) and I’ve trimmed some of what my editor deemed to be excess baggage, but not all. We don’t always agree.

One moot point in this book has been how many characters I should kill. I don’t enjoy doing it. Well okay, sometimes I do. But given the advanced years of most of these characters, one has to be realistic. And then there has been the question of language. I was very surprised when my publisher queried my use of American spelling. As my narrator is American it seemed logical to me. It’s not as though I’ve written it in Sanskrit. Am I wrong? I’d be interested to hear people’s opinions.

I now await jacket designs with everso bated breath.  Please, please God, don’t let it be unbearably crap.

Here I am, back from my jolly hollies, sand purged from my shoes and ready for a bit of light re-writing. My editor enjoyed the first draft of The Early Birds and has requested just one thing: that I insert some love interest for Peggy, now in her late seventies. Ah well. It’s at times like this that I’m grateful for my experience as a short-order journalist. Just tell me what you want and I’ll hold my nose and deliver.

There is also the question of what next. I’m under contract to give my publisher one more book but it’s an odd situation, like being in the dogdays of a love affair. Realistically they are unlikely to renew my contract next year. A 70 year old author with a backlist of commercial flops? Naah. So, you know, a person can lose heart.

I already offered them a sequel to Lubka  –  not that I want to be thought of as a burned out shell capable only of sequels, but because I thought it would be a cracking idea to see how Buzz Wexler copes with having a teenage daughter. Anyway, they didn’t bite. Because Lubka bombed. Too quirky. Apparently.  So Lubka II joins the growing list of books I want to write but no-one wants to publish and I have to decide what alternative to offer. It seems like madness to try to seduce a publisher a-new when the magic has already gone but that’s what I have to do. I feel like a tired old tart dragging my wares around Shepherd Market.

‘Hello dearie. Looking for a nice, quick read?’

On a cheerier note, today is publication day for the paperback edition of The Night in Question. It almost passed me by unnnoticed. Worth a wee dram before dinner, I think.

I’m always glad to hear of an editor becoming a writer. ‘Now they’ll find out,’ I mutter to myself, ‘that it’s not that easy.’ I actually know of someone who does both: writing his own stuff and critiqueing other people’s. This sounds to me like a recipe for schizophrenia.

A few years ago an esteemed former editor of mine quit the world of publishing to write his first book and I seem to recall a high-pitched whimper of pain when I asked him how it was going. But publishing is no longer a gentle, civilised world. The suits and the bean-counters reign supreme and in all likelihood they’re coming after your treasured mid-list with a scythe. So I can understand why people leave it all behind for the freedom of being self-employed. Or as we in the business now joke, the self-unemployed.

Jon Appleton is a recent defector after 20 years of big house publishing. He’s about to publish his first novel Ready to Love and he very kindly invited me to drop in on his blog How to Write a Novel 

Always a pleasure to talk about myself for five minutes…

I wish Jon the very best of luck in his new career. If nothing else, poachers have more fun than gamekeepers. With the exception of Mellors, of course.

I should begin by saying that my desk never looks likes this. When I started out with this writing lark I still had young children, so the table where I wrote was often littered with Lego and orphaned plimsolls as well as my own clutter. These days I have no such excuse but my desk is still a dumping ground for items that betray my flea-like mind. Things I’m going to do, things I should have done last week. The one pesky thing that’s gone from the heap this morning is The Book. It landed on my editor’s desk late last night.

Many, many thanks for all your excellent title suggestions. Sadly most of them fell foul of the taboo against anything that sounds old. Twilight, Senior… Lucy made a strong showing with the forward looking word Next, but anything with Homemakers of America in the title carries the real risk of the FHA organisation billing me (again) for using their name. It was during my final speed read of first draft that I realised my ageing characters were all fans of the early bird dinner. Me too. Who wants to eat at 8pm? I offered the idea to my publishers, more in desperation than in hope, and they jumped on it. Yes! It’s catchy, it’s upbeat, and the nuisance author will feel satisfied that we’ve made a nod in the direction of her oldsters and their geriatric habits.

So there it is. The Early Birds. With an editorial wash and brush up and a following wind it should be out next June.

I’m now going to assume a horizontal position and listen to the waves of Dublin Bay lapping outside my window.

Book-wise I’m at what my marathon-running children tell me is around the 20 mile marker, also known as Just Shoot Me Now. I’m about ten days off finishing first draft and still, somewhat worryingly, making major decisions. Yesterday I tossed a coin to see who would inherit the worm farm. So much for a carefully crafted plot. But I’m a great believer in coin-tossing. When you think you’re undecided it’s a very quick way of discovering what your true feelings are.

This novel, a sequel to The Future Homemakers of America, is still without a title. I want something that reflects the advanced ages of my principal characters. My editor wants something catchy and cheerful. My suggestion du jour is Days of Tonic Wine and Dentures. Just kidding.

I’m open to reader input. If someone comes up with an absolute cracker of a title I’ll even give them a credit.

Now on, on…..

I have no idea whether this link will work beyond the Irish sea but for anyone who has ever lain awake nights thinking, ‘Damn! I wish I knew more about Laurie Graham’, toss and turn no more. Here is County Dublin’s answer to Desert Island Discs.   

Thank you all for your good wishes following my last post. I had a lovely break, which is just as well because I’ve come back to pandemonium, but sure doesn’t everything come with a price tag?

Today let’s talk about critics.

In my thirty year career I’ve enjoyed some very generous reviews and few stinkers. Of course it’s the stinkers one remembers. Someone (and my revenge has been to forget his name) once described me as being the kind of woman who cornered you at a party and regaled you with hilarious (not) stories about her children. Boy did he get that wrong. I’m the kind of woman who keeps her coat on and leaves after one drink and a Twiglet. Anyway it was a stupid ad hominem criticism that had absolutely nothing to do with my book so ya boo sucks to him.

You may have noticed that most critics are not themselves writers. This is an important point. There is a world of difference between creating and demolishing. I can’t really say we don’t need critics. I do read reviews. Sometimes I buy a book or a CD or go to an art exhibit on the strength of a review. I just think we need to keep in mind what critics are. Like tapeworms, they live parasitically off the efforts of others.

Hat tip to Mr Bird for this Brendan Behan quote: critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done, but they’re unable to do it themselves.

Yesterday I was listening to Jacques Offenbach’s wonderful overture to Orpheus in the Underworld. Offenbach knew a thing or two about critics. When Orpheus opened it got panned by a very influential critic, Janin but Mr Janin had his own agenda. He was a bit of a Napoleon brown-nose and he thought Offenbach was taking the mickey. But as we know, bad publicity can be a boon and people flocked to the theatre to see what Janin had found so offensive. It became a box-office success.

When Offenbach died he was buried with withering praise. The Times said, ‘it is very doubtful whether any of his works will survive.’ The Athenaeum said, ‘his music will die with him.’  The names of those critics eludes me. Offenbach has had the last laugh.

I’m about a month behind on delivering first draft but we’re nevertheless nearing the time when the jacket designer has to be briefed.  My editor and I had the following exchange yesterday:

LG: Bearing in mind that my principal characters are now in their seventies and eighties can we please have a jacket that reflects that? Something like this

Or this

Or even this

Editor: sigh.

LG: Because, you know, us old gals rarely get a look in. And frankly, I’m sick of it.

Editor (who is herself north of seventy): I hear what you’re saying, Laurie.

Well we all know what that means.

Editor: I’ll do my best but I can tell you now, the sales force won’t like it. ‘Old’ doesn’t sell.

So there we have it. The gospel according to Salesman of the Year. A complete crock, if you ask me.

When this book comes out next June, please don’t blame me if the cover has been purged of wrinkles. I’ve done my best.

There will now be a short intermission while I slave away at the day job  take advantage of my husband’s admission to respite care and go away for a wee holiday. I’ll be carrying a small case packed with guilt, sadness and ambivalent relief. I’m assured this is the normal emotional baggage allowance.

Back soon.

I know, I know, I KNOW.  Bloggers who rarely blog are very annoying. But I have this damned book to finish and I’m horrendously behind. So I thought I’d throw you a tidbit, just to keep you going until I have something more articulate to say than ‘aaaagggghhh.’

I read this poem yesterday and the last few lines fairly made me yelp with joy. I never saw it coming.

It’s by Billy Collins, sometime US Poet Laureate, and goes as follows:

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry-

flowers wilting on the table,

the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,

the wind moans in the chimney,

and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets

would make of all this,

these shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,

my thoughts turn to the great

tenth-century celebrator of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things

could hardly be restrained,

and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,

Ye-Hah.

See? I do think of you, sitting there, chewing your nails, reading back issues of Radio Times until there’s a new Laurie Graham novel for you to wolf down.