Aug

22

The T.E.Lawrence Approach to Editing

Filed Under The Publishing Industry, Things I like | 2 Comments

Talking of Lawrence of Arabia (well, we were two posts ago – work with me here), my father recently had to move out of his house and I’ve been sorting through some of his old books. In the middle of this I came across an old two-volume hardback edition of Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. As it happens, I’ve never read this (although I’ve seen the film, of course), but I think I want to now. Because the preface contains this wonderful exchange between the editor and the man himself:

Hands up who else could hear Peter O’Toole reading that. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Aug

10

Light Bulb Moment

Filed Under The Publishing Industry, Things I like | 4 Comments

I had a light bulb moment today.

I’m finding that my new computer has had some unexpected effects on my on-line life. One of these is that I’ve found that Safari has a way of managing RSS feeds that is just that bit neater than Internet Explorer, with the result that I’ve been collecting RSS feeds with wild abandon over the last couple of weeks. I’m now following far more blogs than I used to, and as a consequence I’ve come across loads of interesting new stuff. I came across the one that I want to share with you today via Tania Hershman’s blog, and it’s a fascinating piece about the state of short story publishing, and a lot of excellent points may be found therein, along with the associated comment stream.

But it set me thinking: why are short story collections the cinderellas of the industry? I’ve often thought (and I’m clearly not the only one) that in the era of MTV attention spans, short stories really ought to be aggressively marketed as the saviours of the publishing world. I’ve been reading a whole load of short story collections lately (mainly as a result of trying to support Salt Publishing’s extraordinarily successful Just One Book campaign), and it is quite cool to be able to absorb an entire story (or two) in the duration of a commute into London.

One thing did strike me, though. Short story collections are – of necessity – patchy. If they were entirely consistent, they would be dull. A good collection should show a writer trying out all sorts of different things. Some of them will work, and some of them won’t. A case in point: some time ago at If Shakespeare …, my mate Ian Cundell recommended a collection by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) entitled “Running from Legs and other stories”. In particular, he raved about a story entitled “Terminal Misunderstanding”. As it happened, I liked it, but I didn’t think there was anything special about it. However, I thought that the story that came next in the book, “The Sharers”, in which a black man is aggressively patronised by a white man who insists on sharing his ride to work, was absolutely wonderful.

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Jul

5

The Joy of Contracts

Filed Under Anthologies, Publications, The Publishing Industry | Leave a Comment

Well, not really. But I’ve just received my contract for my contribution to the anthology formerly known as “Poems of the Dead”, and I think the juxtaposition of the legalese with the absurd is quite poetic in itself:

THIS AGREEMENT between [...] for the publication of the WORK, as hereinafter defined, in the anthology entitled “Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head,” (hereinafter known as “ANTHOLOGY”) [...]

What rights do zombies have in contract law anyway? I’m sure someone is working on it right now. Anyway, I can’t wait for this anthology to come out – should be excellent.

Jan

8

So Farewell, Then, Cadenza

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Turns out that I won’t get a chance to better my longlisting in a Cadenza Comp, as Cadenza is closing. Sad news indeed, although I’m wondering if it’s just another symptom of the move towards e-zines rather than paper ones. When a story on Every Day Fiction has clocked up in excess of 27000 hits as a result of a mention on StumbleUpon, you wonder if we’re close to the tipping point.

Speaking personally, my current aim as a writer is to get as many people as possible to read my stuff. Well, duh! Of course that’s my aim! And as you can see from my list of publications, almost all of those are currently online rather than print. What’s really interesting is that the likes of EDF and its sister site, Every Day Poets, are attracting submissions from some big players, such as Vanessa Gebbie, Nuala ní Chonchuír and Alex Keegan. What’s for sure is that they aren’t there for the money. But I can see the logic of self-promotion that way so that ultimately more people buy that short story collection when it comes out.

The next big question is whether that short story collection should be an ebook or (as Adrian Graham would put it) a pbook. That’s the point at which my inner luddite comes out, and I still want something tangible to hold in my hand. But then I still buy CDs, so what do I know?