Let a thousand flowers wither

In the last week of the holiday I attended a 5 day novel camp. It comprised ten writers, one of whom is a graduate teaching assistant (with PHD) and another who is a master’s student that takes the second hour of my weekly scripting writing module. I cannot, in good conscience, say that I saw what I felt to be a high standard of writing from my peers. Juvenile question tags (a lot of people grimaced in this novel), nonsensical use of question tags (even when in agreement), overuse of question tags (needlessly saying who spoke when it’s obvious who’s speaking), adjectives that only young writers who will perhaps never evolve into professional ones seem to use (‘smirked’), cinema reels of a character’s second by second interior world without interesting plot development, a lot of people hesitating before they speak for no apparent reason. Fortunately, I ended up writing by far the bulk of my scenes for my character but I had to fight to maintain a certain standard and it ended up not being quite as high as a solo effort. Collaboration at its best is always better than working on one’s own; other people have skills and perspectives one simply doesn’t have. Moreover, interaction can hasten the creative process and foster novel creative practices. Indeed, I am surprised more books aren't collaborative efforts, albeit that in some sense anything that goes through a publishing house is collaborative. Now, here comes the but. BUT, it’s heart breaking when someone comes in making very simple errors whilst at the same time not adding anything that complements the scene artistically. Even the editor in the final edit was coming and making typos and clumsy edits (though one or two sensible) and I had to secretly go in and sweep up after him.

At one point the coordinator, an American professor, said, “If there are any issues write them down on these cards, it’s a chance to let off steam, you can rant as much as you like.” So I took her at her word. I do believe it’s my rants that got me in hot water.

At the end of the novel camp we all got an impassioned speech (or hissy-fit, depending on your point of view) on patriarchy. Lyle said the men in the group were acculturated to be leaders and confrontational and the women were acculturated to be passive and let themselves be dominated. As men it wasn’t entirely our fault, we should forgive ourselves for being oppressive and move on. As women it wasn’t entirely their fault. They should forgive themselves for not standing up for themselves and move on. This was a very serious issue. There was a crisis in the book publishing, 80 % of the women are readers and buyers but men get all the success, because women will read anything and men will only read books by men and...blah blah blah. And if we’re going to be writers our work is going to be edited so we need to trust each other. Mentioning no names, but looking at me three times.

As far as I can tell, there wasn’t much truth in this. Maybe some, but not much.

First of all...if 80 percent of the buyers market is women...doesn’t that mean they control what is successful, even if no men are reading female literature?

Besides that, the mouthiest person and most confrontational person I had to deal with in the group happened to be a girl and the most flexible, self-effacing and gentle happened to be men (not me, admittedly). And in so far as I read at all I’ve been an avid reader of female novelists since I was a boy (Judy Blume, Jilly Cooper, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Sophie Kinsella) and the criticism in my index cards happened to be aimed at men. I repeat. I don’t mind my work being edited. It can be self-indulgent, wander off point and contain mistakes. All I ask is that if it is to be changed let it not be by somebody who has far less of a clue than I do. But I’m grateful to novel camp, because it made me realise that if ten people can write a novel in 350 hours I probably can alone and I might try it this summer. The downside is if it’s as bad as Ash in a Thunderstorm it might be a waste of time.

And so to this week. I’ve got a whole heap of assignments that are going to be due soon, plus a two hour exam, so I’m not going to say much. On Monday I had a late lunch with Kerry in Morrisons. I gave her a pink unicorn cuddly toy (freebie from Amazon). She seemed pleased with it and said she’d put it with her other ones, of which she has so many she’s lost count. I finally figured out a sensible ghost hunting plan. Simply choosing a hunt on a package tour that ends at 2 or 4 am and we can drive straight back from. I sent her some links to various options and she seemed interested but has gone off the radar this week, rather than get back to me on Tuesday, as she said she would. In truth, I think she’s got cold feet, and that’s a shame because I don’t often get the opportunity and I think it would be a fun trip.

Nicholas cancelled the writer’s group this week but I met up with Bethany and worked on a massage parlour scene with her in Pontio. We met for not much more than an hour but made good progress, voice recording three roleplays. I think Bethany is going to be a good writer. At 22 she’s timid and inexperienced, but she’s naturally sharp witted. No collaboration issues.

I don’t have much to say about the seminars and lectures these days. They are mostly a mild refresher of things I already know or don't need to. I attended a lecture on Piers Plowman on Tuesday but it was pointless because I’m not going to answer a question on this text in the exam and most of what we were told is obvious if one reads the text. Likewise, Diane’s non-fiction seminars are all about tactics for making your writing more creative but I don’t have a tactic supply chain problem. Perhaps a self-belief one, a where to focus one, but the actual tactics come naturally to me and have been absorbed from reading other writers. This week we had a girl come in and give us a short lecture on crime fiction. It consisted of her showing us two trailers, one southern fried crime and another somewhat darker. The whole idea was, there are different ways of presenting crime and had we thought about these and how it could feed into our own work? It really was that simple and I would humbly suggest that the tone of the lessons should be somewhat more advanced. Other than that, Diane has come in two weeks consecutively now gushing about how wonderful she thinks Stephen Hawking is and at the end of class she played a very loud YouTube video of some of Stephen Hawking’s dreary quotes turned into an MC rap which she thought was just the coolest thing ever. I don’t think she noticed that she was quite alone. I recognise the syndrome, because there were times in China where I thought I had a video or song which was the best thing since sliced bread and my students weren’t necessarily on the same page as I was.