Never, Ever Write a Novella

Other members of the writing community who are a bit smarter than me will already know this.

I'm just a sucker for punishment.

I wrote Wolfish because I'd never written a novella before and wanted to see how it would turn out. Pretty good, as it happens. I'm happy with it. Although my publisher reckons 51,000 just about classes as 'novel'. Me, I think below 60k fits the realms of novella. It's a moot point. But I have to concede they might be right because I can't find a single novella competition that accepts anything over 50,000. One even drew the line at 45,000. 

I've just completed two novels (one and a half, let's say) and I do have another novel already slated for publication this year, or early next year. My plan was to hold these two MS back and run them through competitions and agent submissions.

I'm extremely happy with my publisher, but they also encourage me to try my luck. Which is one of the reasons I love them - they're really invested in their authors. Each time I finish an MS I try a couple of agents, but I must admit, I don't try very hard. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's self-doubt, maybe it's that I know I don't write stuff for the mainstream, or maybe I'm just comfortable where I am - a 50/50 profit split is not to be sniffed at.

Still, there's a little part of every author that wonders 'could I go further?'

In my mind, I assumed novellas were on the up. There's countless writing articles out there about why you should write a novella right now (I know, you take your advice from the internet, you're screwed anyway), and I honestly believed that millennials and the internet generation preferred short reads. 

Apparently not enough to sway the industry.

I received two extremely pleasant rejections from two established agents, both saying the same thing:

I really enjoyed the sample and you are clearly a talented writer but unfortunately, we do not accept adult fiction submissions of less than 70,000 words as they are extremely unlikely to find publishing deals.

Thank you so much for sending me your work. I think your writing is beautiful. However, having considered this project... [n]ovellas are notoriously difficult to place with publishers, but if you decide to write anything longer in future I would be happy to consider it.

It was almost as bemusing as the time I received a standard printed rejection slip with 'But I really enjoyed it!' on the back.

It's nice to know that, essentially, I don't suck. But I do always choose to write the wrong things. Or, rather, the things I want to write.

That's why I'm so fond of my publisher. They're just as weird as I am. So, in that respect, I do write the right things, and you will be seeing Wolfish on sale in the future. Ghostwoods don't shy away from a short read.

I'm left wondering whether the fast-read culture of today are mostly people who have completely bypassed novellas altogether and consume text bytes and Instagram captions, leaving those who do still pick up a book as traditional novel readers? Perhaps there is nothing in between if publishers won't publish novellas. Perhaps, if your attention span is only as long as a novella, you won't even read that? Or, perhaps the publishing industry is slow on the uptake?

Phew, it's a good thing no one ever published a weighty tome like Legend of a Suicide or Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Those would have been a total flop...

One thing's for sure, next time I write a novella, I'll keep writing until it's a novel.

World Book Day 2017

In what is now becoming a regular tradition (2016, 2015), time for my annual World Book Day roundup. A day that the world insists falls on 23 April, but the UK (probably because they didn't invent it) claims as the 1st Thursday in March. We may all be reading books, but some of us struggle to read a calendar.

This year feels as though I have done very little reading, but an awful lot of writing. Hoping I've got enough to talk about - if not, click the two date links above to view more recommendations.

The book I have just finished reading:

I finished two books within a couple of days of each other. The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill and Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie. Really enjoyed both of them. I'm a huge fan of Adichie's TED talk on The Danger of a Single Story, but this was the first of her novels that I've read. Hill is also extremely good, a man writing from a woman's perspective with absolute authenticity. Both worth a read.

The book I am currently reading:

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

I must admit, I've been reading this for a really long time. I'm very much enjoying it, but it's a book that requires full concentration and I haven't had much lately. It's largely written in Patois, which is sumptuous - real eye candy for the reader, but takes a bit of thinking about. The chapters are very short though, so it's a good book to have in your bag when you're waiting in a queue.

Author crush of the year:

Jessie Burton for The Miniaturist

A very interesting literary writer, and a wonderfully mystical book. It's set in 1680s Netherlands and it's only whilst checking that information that I just discovered one of the central characters, Petronella Oortman, was a real person - with a real miniature dollhouse. Learn something new every day.

  


Top of my TBR pile:

For the first time in a very long time, I don't have anything lined up. I have many books I'd like to read, but I also have many books I'd like to write. I'm just settling down after quite a busy few months and haven't quite had time to organise my TBR pile into any sort of order. However, I am eager to read more works by my own publisher, Ghostwoods. Perhaps The Boy Who Spoke to Stars by Reuben Miles or All Lies and Jest by Kate Harrad.

Surprises: 

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

Apparently sales of dystopian literature have spiked since Trump got into power. I've never read Huxley's most famous work, Brave New World, but I read this because it was mentioned in Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. I think it was his first novel, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. There's one part in there about a household of dwarfs which was so sad I think it will stay with me forever.

Collections: 

I'm currently dipping in and out of a collection of contemporary short stories called Shaking the Tree (yes, I do hear Peter Gabriel every time I open it), edited by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah. As the cover suggests, it's a collection of fiction and memoirs by black women, published in 2003. Some extremely thought-provoking and gritty work in there.

Children's books:

Not usually an area of interest for me, but 2017 has been a fantastic year for my friends at ImagineWe publishing house in Kigali. They've released two titles: Oh, Rwandan Child! and ABC's of Rwanda. These guys are blazing a trail here with help from Inkstain Illustrations. Check them out.

Maasai Mara

Just back from a fantastic trip to the Maasai Mara with lovely friends. Stayed at Aruba Camp - highly recommended. If you're ever planning a trip to Kenya, check out Tracey and Francis who run OTA Travel.

Wild Tales

Yep. No matter how many times I watch Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales), I love it. Absolutely fantastic Spanish film. If you enjoy Twilight Zone-style weirdness and dark humour, you'll love this. The wedding finale is absolutely superb.

Sensitivity Readers

Sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm with nothing better to do than respond to an article I've just been reading: Publishers are hiring 'sensitivity readers' to flag potentially offensive content.

Suggest reading the article before my response, otherwise it isn't going to make much sense.

Jumping in on the point:

Still, some sensitivity readers feel they are in part contributing to the problem. Clayton said she's unsettled by the idea that she's being paid for her expertise, but also is helping white authors write black characters for books from which they reap profit and praise.

"It feels like I'm supplying the seeds and the gems and the jewels from our culture, and it creates cultural thievery," Clayton said. "Why am I going to give you all of those little things that make my culture so interesting so you can go and use it and you don't understand it?"

Then don't be a sensitivity reader - that's the job description. Become a writer. Whereas I accept the point about being less likely to be published than a white woman, a white woman is apparently eight times less likely to be published than a man. Do what a thousand authors have done throughout history and choose a nom de plume if it helps, but overcome your own fear of rejection and put yourself out there. 

I absolutely accept there's a massive market disconnect for African writers. I trawl the submissions pages for my students, looking for competitions and publishers specifically asking for submissions by African writers, but the majority of those submission calls are for African-American writers and most require submission fees that writers without access to PayPal are unable to make.

The misnomered international publishing scene puts writers in economically developing countries at extreme disadvantage. Small publishing houses are springing up across Africa, and some authors do have access to digital publishing tools, but many can't accept online payment for their work and haven't got access to strong editing or marketing support. 

I totally accept that. The problems are very clear.

But, moving on a little from the underlying root issues, I absolutely disagree that the way to respond to that is to attack artistic freedom to switch places, and to suggest that writing from different perspectives is cultural thievery.

And you may say 'Oh, but you're a white British woman, you would think that.'

But if you tell me that I can't write from another cultural perspective, then you tell Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie she should never have written Richard Churchill, or Lawrence Hill that he should never have written as a woman (aren't there enough female authors on the planet?).

Both Richard and Aminata were wholly authentic to me. They truly brought home the point that storytelling transcends time, place and gender - when done well.

But art isn't perfect. Artists are not perfect. We make mistakes, we don't always know where to look for the research we need, we try, we fail, and sometimes we succeed.

Bad writing is bad writing, or poorly researched, or flourishing a touch too much poetic license. Let the critics point that out, let the publishers run it through a sensitivity reader, but under no circumstances tell people to stop trying, or that they can't, or that they mustn't.

I've read pieces by African writers which have put forward extremely stereotypical portrayals of westerners, things that were totally inauthentic, biased or one-dimensional, but all I thought at the times was 'this writer hasn't quite got it,' never 'this writer should stop imagining, should stop writing, should stop experimenting.'

Curb writers, you curb writing.

It's very easy to see something not written as you would like to write it yourself and suggest that it should never have been written. But if it wasn't written, we wouldn't now be having this dialogue. That's in no way to say that publishing isn't overdue an overhaul, and that vast numbers of people aren't represented on the world market, but the way to address that isn't to malign those who are already writing, however little you might think of what they have written. With each brilliant book written by a writer from a culture that isn't their own, we break down barriers. We start to find the threads that bind humanity together. And there are as many of those as threads which divide us. Which do you want to search for?

[See also: Experts Or Censors? The Debate Over Authors' Use Of Sensitivity Readers]

Typo Woes

Oh dear. Almost as blushsome as eating black people and losing your shift.

And, He's Back