Then I read this very sensible piece by Jay Lake, which solidified for me something I’ve been trying to say for awhile now, which basically goes like this: before you take someone’s advice pay careful attention to where that person is coming from. Are they qualified to be giving this particular advice?

Now, it’s pretty obvious that if you wish to be published taking advice from some who has never been published is usually not wise. But Jay’s bigger advice is that often taking the advice of someone with a thriving career is also not wise because too many times what they can tell you is how they broke into the field. Problem is that happened ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty years ago and the field has changed since then.

So that when an established writer tells you that you don’t need an agent to get published they’re not lying. Back in the day when they were first published you didn’t. They’re also not lying when they say they continue to be published without an agent. But they’re neglecting to mention that that’s because they are known by those publishers. Someone looking to sell their first novel is not and given that so many of the big publishing houses are closed to submissions an agent is usually a first-time author’s best bet for getting published at a big house.

Any advice I give about getting published has to be taken with a large grain of salt by anyone who isn’t trying to break in to YA in the US. I have no idea how to get published in Australia—even though I’m Australian. I wasn’t published there until after I sold in the US. I still know far more about publishing in the US than I do about my own country. Nor do I know much about any market in the world except YA in the USA. If you’re trying to break into Romance or Crime or Literachure I’m useless to you.

That said, I’m probably not the most useful person to you for breaking into YA in the US either. I know about half a dozen agents well. There are way more reputable ones than that. I follow all the publishing news, far more than most YA writers, but I still don’t know that much about what goes on in those publishing houses and what all the editors are looking for. I know many editors, but I’ve only worked with a handful. You only really know an editor well when you’ve worked with them.

I know I said above that you shouldn’t be taking an unpublished person’s advice, but there are some great blogs by such writers detailing the process of trying to get published, which have very sensible things to say about query letters and the nuts and bolts of submitting to various different publishers when you don’t have an agent. All stuff that I know very little about. I have not written a query letter in a decade. Someone who’s actively trying to get published right now knows way more about query letters than I do.

I can talk about what it’s llike being a journeyman YA author. I can give you an author’s view on how you get published in more than one country and a variety of other topics that have to do with being a YA author with five novels under her belt. But take what I say about breaking into this field with a grain of salt. For that you’ll get better advice from agents and editors and brand new YA authors and from those on the verge of being published.

1. Before you yell at me for this statement you should know that I spent twenty years trying to break into mainstream publishing. I know how it feels. Also very few of those unpublished writers are bitter about it and decide that the big publishers are evil. Most suck it up and keep trying.
2. No, the way to break into YA is not to publish short stories first. That may apply to science fiction (though not nearly as much as it used to) but there is no YA short story market except for anthologies that you don’t get invited to submit to you unless you’re already published. I got my first anthology invitation after having three novels published.

Melina Marchetta is probably Australia’s most popular YA writer and with good reason her books are deeply awesome. I just finished her latest, The Piper’s Son and I think it’s her best book to date. I was up reading it till 3AM and then I couldn’t sleep for another hour because I was weeping too hard. LOVED IT.

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Melina Marchetta is a Sydney writer. She has just released her fifth novel, The Piper’s Son, a sequel to her 2003 novel Saving Francesca which will be published in the US next March. Her website is www.melinamarchetta.com.au.

Melina says:

Please note that this is not a piece about books I don’t like, but about personal taste and what we look for in the novels we choose to read.

When you don’t like a book that everyone is raving about, you feel guilty. You don’t want to be that person who lets hype affect their reading because I hate that person. I want to say to that person, ‘Grow up. You can still be individual and love the same book or film as everyone else.’

I’m only admitting this publicly because he’s dead and I won’t be offending him, but I’m in the minority and didn’t care for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Despite being told that I wasn’t going to be able to put down Dragon Tattoo after page 200, I spent the next 356 pages dying to do just that. But I’d like to think that deep down, me not liking it had nothing to do with the hype or with Stieg Larsson’s writing and had everything to do with personal taste.

It wasn’t until I recently read another crime fiction novel, Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore, that it became clear to me that when it comes to that particular genre, I need a tortured hero, lack of exposition and killer dialogue. As booklovers we choose novels because they have the secret ingredient we need to nourish our personal reading appetite. We reject others because they have the ‘turn off’ ingredient that is made up mostly by our personal idiosyncrasies or context.

Someone close to me is turned off by YA literature, for example. I forgive them because they have pretty good reasoning. Being a teenager was bad enough when they were young and they can’t bear the idea of re-living it again through angst-ridden characters like most of mine.

But the problem with me and those who have rules about what they do and don’t include in their reading material is that we miss out on some great stories and genres. I love it when someone stumbles on my work by pure accident. I love it when I stumble into a genre that I’ve kept away from. Science Fiction is a classic example. I always felt it was a bit over my head and then I read Cordelia’s Honour by Lois McMaster Bujold. I picked it up because I thought it was a romance. I ended up having a mini obsession for every Miles Vorkosigan novel. It was a good introduction to the genre.

But despite that, I still have my list below of what turns me away from reading a novel. Any suggestions to change my mind will be appreciated.

• Love triangles. I haven’t been in one since fourth grade so it’s probably love-triangle envy that I’m feeling.
  Novels where middle aged men end up with much younger women.
• Novels where there are no women or vague references to them. I forgive Melville and Conrad for Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness because one has a killer opening line and the other nourishes my obsession with rivers, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
• Poor female representation. This can be anything from insipid female characters to one dimensional kick-arse heroines. Of course there are some fantastic kick-arse heroines out there, but the ones I don’t care for are those who display a plethora of male traits and nothing else and are considered the new feminists.
• Novels where the character describes themselves as feisty, witty and quirky on the first page. These are characteristics that can’t be self-diagnosed and have to been shown not told.
• Novels where the hero/heroine die at the end. I’m that person standing beside you in the bookstore reading the last page first. If there’s death on the last page the book goes back on the shelf. I know I’m missing out on some really fantastic novels by this exclusion. Before I die, for example, will be the first novel I read if I let go of my not-reading-novels-where-the-heroine-dies-in-the-end rule because I hear it’s absolutely fantastic and I’m going to go with the hype. If you’ve read any of my novels, all the deaths happen early on, usually on the first page and a couple of hundred in between, but rarely at the end. The idea of mortality keeps me awake at night so having to agonise over my death as well as another character’s is trauma I try to avoid.

  Note: The no-death rule also applies to films. I refuse to watch any more productions of Romeo and Juliet or anything to do with the life of Jesus Christ because we all know what happens at the end. They die.

Does anyone else have any turn-off ingredient? (please don’t mention book titles unless the author is dead).

Today’s guest blogger is Baby Power Dyke whose blog I discovered last year and instantly fell in love with. She’s rude, smart and funny. We have shared crushes on Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Lacewell. So, clearly, she has excellent tase. She is my kind of a gal.

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Baby Power Dyke is a smartass. She’s an actor in New York City who is terrible about auditions. She lives in Brooklyn with the love of her life, who is also an actor and is muchMUCH better about auditions. Nonprofitting supports her blogging and acting habits. She loves cheese. She was born on April Fool’s Day and thinks that because of that, she receives the best birthday presents ever. She’s terrible about mail. Her personal theme songs are “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” by Barbra Streisand.

BPD says:

It is Black History Month and boy am I feeling the love.

Just yesterday Rush Limbaugh (or as I like to think of him, the Phantom Menace) derisively referred to the health care reform bill which is swimming its way upstream through Congress as a “civil rights bill” and “reparations.” To be clear, what he means by using “civil rights bill” and “reparations” as a pejorative is “this health care bill is another attempt by the lowly, lazy, complaining Black folk to take bread from the mouths of hard-working honest White Americans. First they took February, what’s next? March?.”

Last week the fine gentlemen of Pi Kappa Alpha decided to throw a party to “honor” Black History Month which included a very helpful how-to for the ladies so that they might properly comport themselves as “Ghetto chicks.”

Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes—they consider Baby Phat to be high class and expensive couture. They also have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave, usually in bad colors, such as purple or bright red. They look and act similar to Shenaynay, and speak very loudly, while rolling their neck, and waving their finger in your face. Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it, by forming new words, such as “constipulated”, or simply cursing persistently, or using other types of vulgarities, and making noises, such as “hmmg!”, or smacking their lips, and making other angry noises,grunts, and faces.

But it was John Mayer (singer, songwriter, Poor Man’s Stevie Ray Vaughn) that got the month started off right with an interview that he did for Playboy where he proved that he doesn’t have the good sense (or graces) that God gave Kanye West.

MAYER: Star magazine at one point said I was writing a tell-all book for $10 million. On Star’s cover it said what a rat! My entire life I’ve tried to be a nice guy.

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

PLAYBOY: Let’s put some names out there. Let’s get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s superhot, and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, “Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.” And you’d be like, “What? We weren’t talking about that.”

That’s an official Nice Guy FAIL.

These harbingers of Black History Month can get a girl a little down.

But not me. I am thankful that I have a partner who loves and cherishes me for the supreme delight that I am.

I am also thankful for the amazing strong black women (SBW) that I have in my life as role-models.
 Without my mother, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand, my confidence in my smokingness (both intellectual and physical) might have been dimmed by that young-man whose mother must be really ashamed of him right now and who is actually making me sympathize with that Jennifer Aniston person.

But lately I realize that I’ve been leaving out one deserving woman in my SBW list of might: RuPaul.

Nownownow, I know what you’re saying, “But BPD, RuPaul’s been around since forever how come it’s taken you so long?” Really, I have no excuse.

From the revelatory, Super Model, with its clarion cry that got me through many a grueling show choir rehearsal (damn you mirrored gym) to the present RuPaul’s Drag Race—which is not about cars¹ —RuPaul has given me the balls to get through the tough times. RuPaul has made me the man I am today. And by man, I mean small black lesbian gay-dandy.²

When I’m about to do something that seems super important, I think, “You better work, bitch!”
 I chant, “It’s time to lip-synch for your life!” when it’s time for me to move mountains.

Click here for vid.
. . . Minute 37 is where the real magic happens.

RuPaul is about knowing who you are and owning your fabulousness. RuPaul is about ripping people’s faces off with your fierceness and leaping in your stilettos over the shit. Most importantly RuPaul is not about some trifling mess of a boy that even Ghandi would slap.

With Ru and the other SBW in my life, I know my worth. I’m not even going to sweat it. Because I know, that despite how hurtful and how hateful what John Mayer said was, it’s not about me. It’s not about any other woman of color (or woman, frankly) in the world. It’s about him and the dick-shrivel that he is. I’m not waiting for the world to change. I am the change that I seek in the world. I am the light that I want to see. I am fabulous. I am fierce. I am magnificent.

Come for me, bitches.

1. But just . . . can we all agree that if RuPaul hosted a muscle car show with, say, Joan Rivers or Tina Turner—that pair would be a mother-fucking wig-off—that show would be ridiculously awesome.
2. 2010 is the year of the bow-tie. Look out people!

Doret Canton loves sport as much as I do. In fact, I interviewed her about that very subject right here on this blog and she said many smart and sensible things. (Except about American Football not being boring.) The reviews on her blog are amongst my favourite online reviews. Do check them out.

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Doret Canton is a bookseller who likes many of her customers. The others she runs and hides from. After working at a bookstore for so long, she has turned avoiding would be problem customers into an art form. She updates her blog TheHappyNappyBookseller regularly.

If This Book Was A Television Show

I loved Dia Reeves’ debut YA novel Bleeding Violet. It was beautifully strange. Check out this great review by The Book Smugglers. Seventeen year old Hanna heads to her mom’s hometown of Portero, Texas after knocking her aunt out cold. Portero, like Hanna, is far from normal. Before arriving in Portero Hanna only speaks to her dead father, now she can see him as well. Everything that happened in Portero was so out there I loved it. Halfway through Bleeding Violet, I couldn’t help but think—if this was a television show it would get cancelled. It would go something like this:

Week 1: Watched by a few people with nothing better to do.
Week 2: Only half return.
Week 3: Some convince a few friends to check out the weirdness that happens in Portero. More people tune in
Week 4-8: Word is spreading about this strange show. Friends are getting together to watch.
Week 9: A made for TV movie airs.
Week 10: The show is bumped again. Some fans begin to worry
Week 11: – A rerun. Many aren’t exicted about this but at least its back.
Week 12: Another rerun.
Week 13: Another reun. By now the smart fans are catching on. They know the network is merely screwing with them by showing reruns.
Six Months Later: The incomplete complete box set (with never seen before episodes) is available.

So many great, not-the-same-as-everything-else shows get cancelled. I still miss Arrested Development, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me

Thankfully Bleeding Violet is a book and not a television show. Though once this idea was in my head I started thinking about how other novels would fair. Zetta Elliott’s wonderful YA novel A Wish After Midnight would be passed over by all networks, large and small. They would totally miss its great miniseries potential. Many of my co-workers read YA. Like me, one enjoys Maureen Johnson’s novels. I asked her, If Suite Scarlett and its follow up, Scarlett Fever, (which was so worth the wait) were a television show how would it do? If the show stuck to the book, my co-worker gave it two seasons. Sadly, that sounded about right. That’s why we have TV on DVD, and, better yet, books.

Since this guest post might be read by people in Oz I shall end with a question. I loved Melina Marchetta’s newest novel Finnikin of the Rock. The year is young but I already know it’s a top read of 2010. If Finnikin of the Rock was an Aussie TV show how would it do?

Today we have Sarah Rees Brennan, who is quite mad, which is often quite an advantage for the writing of fine fiction, as you will discover if you read any of SRB’s books. She was last here for an interview where she revealed the insanity of her writing technique.

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Sarah Rees Brennan is from Ireland, but she likes to roam the world causing havoc, and on one such mission encountered Justine Larbalestier in New York City and the rest is history (and spells your doom). She can be found saying stuff like this all the time on her own blog and she is the author of The Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, first instalment out, second instalment out this May, about which more here. Her own demonic possession is an unfounded rumour that has little to no basis in fact.

Sarah says:

So, ladies and gentlemen of the audience sitting in your chairs, happily anticipating another blog post filled with the usual thoughtfulness and wit by your favourite author, Dr. Justine Larbalestier.

I am sorry to disappoint you: said Dr. Larbalestier is currently unavailable.

JUSTINE: Oh Sarah. I fear my blog readers will pine.

SARAH: I have no doubt they will. They seem loyal and devoted sorts: they will pine like Christmas trees. (This is the kind of ‘wit’ you guys are in for. You lucky, lucky guys.)

JUSTINE: Would you write a guest blog for me?

SARAH: Oh, sure! I will try to be wise like you! Fill the void in their souls!

TEN MINUTES LATER

SARAH: Well, it was a nice idea.

So instead of Justine Larbalestier, you have me, and I am going to be talking about movies and sex! (Cue that scene when people are at a petting zoo, approaching a sweet kitty, and then . . . ‘IT’S A LION HARVEY, JESUS CHRIST, IT’S A LION, GET IN THE CAR.’)

There is a thing you need to understand about me. Sometimes, I like truly terrible things. I have watched all three High School Musical movies.

Nevertheless, I would not have of my own free will chosen to watch a movie starring Matthew McConaughey. (Apologies to all fans of this fine thespian in the audience. You may want to look away now.) But I was on a plane and had finished my book, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past started playing, I made an error in judgement.

Said movie’s plot: Matthew McConaughey is a heartless playboy about to be taught the error of his ways by apparitions from his dating life! Jennifer Garner is the One Who Got Away, who needs to be recaptured once Matthew has learned his touching and totally unexpected lesson about true love being all that really matters!

Matters were proceeding exactly as anticipated right until the point where we have the flashback to Matthew and Jennifer’s past romance, in which they banter, she softens towards him, his heart grows three sizes, and they come together in one glorious night with all the torrid passion of a box of cornflakes left out in the rain. Matthew McConaughey, sneaky playboy that he is, flees his own feelings and tries to sneak out on her as she sleeps. She wakes up.

JENNIFER GARNER: Matthew McConaughey, you beast, I trusted you!

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: . . . Why? You had a clear view of my smirky, smarmy face at all times!

JENNIFER GARNER: Because we’re on the movie poster together! I mean that’s not important now! What’s important is that there are some women you sneak out on in the middle of the night, and there are some women you stay and snuggle with, and I am one of the women you stay and snuggle with.

At this point, I turned to the lady in the seat beside me.

SARAH: I cannot believe I just saw that! Can you believe you just saw that? Can you believe we literally, actually just saw a scene in which the heroine who we’re clearly meant to agree with explicitly says that, pretty much, some women are whores and deserve to be treated like trash! While obviously Matthew McConaughey has made a mistake dealing with these trashy wenches, he is not a trashy wench himself. He’s a dude, so it’s all good, as long as he treats a nice lady right when he’s got one. Because we’re all still divided into ladies and fallen women! Argh!

MY NEIGHBOUR ABOARD THE PLANE: Je ne comprends pas.

SARAH: Oh. Oh right. COOL. Excusez-moi. J’avais . . . a fit of feminist rage. Um. Excusez-moi.

The nice French plane lady patted my hand. Clearly, she thought I was insane. Obviously, she was right, but that is not the point at this time.

I have no excuse for watching Wild Child, which is a terrible teen comedy, except that I truly and deeply in my soul love terrible teen comedies, and I went to see 17 Again in the cinema. (‘Justine, Justine’ you all moan faintly. ‘Why hast thou forsaken us, Justine?’)

Wild Child is about a spoiled American teen who is sent to English boarding school, a place which is awfully stodgy, and where many people wear tweed, and some hunt! Obviously she learns valuable life lessons, and it all culminates in an epic lacrosse battle.

But there is a specific part of the movie I wish to focus on, and it is this: at one point, our heroine’s jolly dormitory mates ask if she has ‘done it’ yet, and she says with a toss of her mane that she has! A ton! And that seemed to be that, she got on with playing merry japes and romancing the prim headmistress’s son, and I thought to myself ‘You know. I think that’s pretty great.’

Oh, that was a rash thought of mine. For at the school dance, our heroine having bonded sufficiently with her dormitory mates, she tells them that no, actually, she never has! Just like them! She’s really been good all along.

Now, the heroine of Wild Child is meant to be sixteen or seventeen. I’m not saying ‘People, we need more teenage bangin’!’ Except maybe I kind of am. (Far away in New York City, my editor just had a tiny, tiny stroke. Sorry about that, Karen!) I trust I do not need to tell you guys that the decision not to bang is a totally okay and often wise decision on the part of people of both genders, at all ages.

But really. Really, in this day and age, do we so entirely equate a woman’s moral character with her sexual behaviour? Of course, we (and by we I mean, you know, Society) do. We have a whole lot of insults for ladies who like to have sex, and we don’t draw the same line in the sand for dudes. Having our books and movies reflect that attitude so very clearly just made me think—wow, how patterns go on and on repeating. We must sit down. And take a look. And say to ourselves, ‘Oh, wow, that is pretty gross.’ (Not that I’m encouraging people to go watch Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. MY LORD NO. I’ve taken that bullet for you all. Only too happy to have been of service. SAVE YOURSELVES. I can still hear the lambs on the plane screaming about feminism.)

Another thing that I’ve been doing lately, in between watching teen comedies, is reading romance novels. Because a) I was trying to overcome prejudice against certain types of books, as said prejudice is dumb and b) turns out a lot of romance novels are pretty great, so I wanted to read more.

Quite recently I read The Devil’s Delilah by Loretta Chase, in which our heroine Delilah makes out with a rake! And she likes it. And I was delighted. Not because I wanted her to end up with the rake: I loved the bookworm hero, and Delilah and the bookworm had already made out, and it had been most excellent. But because that’s something I’d noted in a lot of (not just romance, and not just historical) novels—that heroines were given a pass on desire, as long as they desired the heroes alone. The implication of that? Women, with sexy feelings not associated with True Love! They would be no more than common trollops!

So now I have a great love for books with heroines who make out with people who aren’t heroes, and like it, and go with the hero because said hero is a better match. (As an example, if Jane Austen had written make-out scenes, which she did not, I feel Elizabeth Bennet is obviously attracted to Wickham, and could’ve had a great time snogging him, though of course it would still have been followed with the Austen equivalent of ‘Whoops, you are a tool, MY MISTAKE.’)

And—well, I just think it would be great if we could have heroines, even teenage heroines—sure, some of whom have decided to wait or haven’t decided to wait but just haven’t decided not to, but some of whom didn’t wait, had a disastrous experience and came through it just fine. Some of whom didn’t wait, had a great time, parted ways, repeated same five or a hundred times, and were also just fine. (Obviously, the reverse should happen as well, and actually, I think it’s kind of cool that one of the Most Beloved Fictional Characters of Our Time, Edward Cullen, is a self-confessed and unashamed virgin hero of a century plus. So, you know, take a bow, Twilight! If I had to pick between you and Matthew McConaughey, Mr Cullen, you would most assuredly be my sparkly date to the school dance.)

And next time you see a heroine tell people she’s Pure as the Driven Incidentally, or Not Like the Other Girls (those trashy wenches)—well, frown at the screen or the page, and think ‘Oh wow, that is pretty gross.’

Ahem. Thank you for your kind attention, ladies and gentlemen! (*surveys the audience, some of whom seem to be weeping softly and saying things like ‘Get thee behind me, Satan . . . Oh Justine, Justine . . .’*) Please feel free to tell me to get thee behind you, or tell me about kind of gross or kind of excellent portrayals of sexuality in fiction, in the comments.

I also wonder if people run interviews on their blog because they think it will increase traffic.¹ Especially if the author includes a link to the interview on their own site. However, if the interview is not very interesting, i.e. includes those generic questions I was talking about in the previous post, that traffic will be fleeting. Hardcore fans of the author won’t be interested.

Also I’m not convinced that people are particularly interested in interviews. Looking at my site stats, I can tell you that my interview page is probably the least trafficked page on the site. I suspect that many people, even those who love books and have many favourite authors, are uninterested in reading interviews. Unless those interviews are amazing. I know that’s how I feel. I have zero interest, unless the interview is on a topic that I care about, or is with someone I’m interested in who is rarely interviewed.

The book blogs I like best are full of excellent discussion of books. Opinions about the business, trends, books, authors and readers. One of my favourite recent posts was Miss Attitude’s passionate call for a greater variety of YA African-American historicals—ones not about slavery or the civil rights movement. That post generated a great deal of discussion and, I hope, some authors taking up her challenge.

What I’m trying to say is that interviews may seem like an easy way to create content and generate traffic, but they’re not either. A good interview is very hard to do and even then is unlikely to generate much traffic. I’ve conducted two interviews on this blog: one with Doret Canton about YA & girls playing sport and one with John Green about lying. Neither generated much traffic. Fortunately, I didn’t do them for the traffic, but for the fun of talking to two very smart people about two very interesting topics.

I would love to see bloggers doing as Ari and all my other favourite book bloggers do—writing about what they feel passionate about and conducting interviews not because they feel they must, but because they want to add to the conversation on their blog.

I’m sure there is varying mileage out there, feel free to share.

1. Part of why I suspect this is the blogger whose interview request also asked if I would link to the completed interview.

It is exactly the kind of review that annoys me the most. The I-don’t-like-this-kind-of-book-but-I’m-reviewing-it-anyway review. Editors seem to think it dreadfully clever to get the reviewer who hates feminism to review the feminist tome, the hater of romance to review Jennifer Crusie’s latest, and those who are full of contempt for teenagers and books to review YA. It will generate conflict and controversy! Goodie!

No, it will generate annoyance and boredom. I know what people who hate YA think of YA. I want to know if this is a good example of YA. I don’t want to read some boring tosser explaining why the genre sucks. Heard it all before.

Lethem is not a fan of literary biographies so he barely engages with Schankar’s biography. The first three quarters of the review is taken up with his view of the Highsmith revival and which books of hers he thinks best. When he finally mentions the bio, he complains that Schenkar goes into too much detail:

No impression, however, could have possibly prepared Schenkar for the catalogue of torments her scrupulous and excruciating research uncovered. She is compelled by that research to tell us more than we could possibly wish to know. Much as Highsmith rates full treatment, I can’t help wishing Schenkar had spared herself (and me) and written a personal recollection instead (think of Shirley Hazzard’s short memoir of Graham Greene, “Greene On Capri”).

Trouble is Schenkar never met Highsmith, so such a memoir would have to be fiction. That Lethem came away with the impression that Joan Schenkar knew Patricia Highsmith is very odd indeed. No where in it does she so much as imply such a meeting took place, let alone an acquaintance long enough to supply material for a memoir. Which leads me to think that Lethem did not read the whole book or skimmed it.

He concludes by saying:

The best thing Schenkar accomplished, for me, was to drive me back to the work. If Highsmith’s antidote to the poison of living was the writing of her novels, we can follow suit and read them. The antidote to literary biography is literature. [My emphasis.]

That last line is key. Me thinks Mr Lethem does not like literary biography if he feels it requires an antidote, which makes me wonder why he bothered to review one. I can certainly understand his reasons for not liking the whole genre. He’s a much more famous writer than I am so the odds of there one day being bios of him are relatively high. I worry about it and—other than J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer—there’s not exactly a huge number of YA writer bios. But then I squirm every time I read a profile or interview of me.

As a writer reading a bio of another writer I find myself wondering just how particular episodes in my past would be portrayed. It makes for much discomfort and a strong desire to destroy all my journals. And I’m a model of good behaviour compared to Highsmith.

I admit I may be projecting my own feelings onto Lethem. Maybe he dislikes literary bios because he doesn’t want to know the warts and failings of his literary heroes? Or maybe one fell on him in his cradle?

I also disagree with the implication that biography is not literature. As it happens Schenkar is an excellent and witty writer. Lethem quotes one of the many passages I’ve read out loud to Scott:

Luckily, their African trip never came off. Jane Bowles had phobias about trains, tunnels, bridges, elevators, and making decisions, while Pat’s phobias included, but were not confined to, noise, space, cleanliness, and food, as well as making decisions. A journey to the Dark Continent by Patricia Highsmith and Jane Bowles in each other’s unmediated company doesn’t bear thinking about.

Some of my favourite writers are biographers. I’m sure they’d be astonished to discover they have not been writing literature. But surely he didn’t mean that last line to be read in an exclusionary way. I have heard Lethem at science fiction conventions making strong arguments for the inclusion of science fiction in the category of literature. Which makes it even more peculiar to see him employing such exclusionary tactics himself.

What I loved so much about Schenkar’s bio was that it created such a three-dimensional portrait of Highsmith. The book is fascinating. I had to stop and read sections out loud to Scott multiple times. Over the past few days of reading it I’ve been talking about it to everyone I know.¹ It’s an incredibly intimate portrait of a writer. Of their life and their craft and their process.

It’s also a fascinating portrait of the development of a misogynist, bigoted, racist, anti-semite. Highsmith is awful. A genuinely bad person. But I now have a much clearer idea of how she got that way.

My main complaint about the book is that there was not enough detail. I was very frustrated that there was not a separate section on Highsmith’s publishing career and how, when, and where her current literary reputation emerged. We’re told in passing that her 1950s lesbian novel, The Price of Salt (later retitled Carol) sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but we’re not told over what period of time, and that Found in the Street only sold 3,000 copies on its first US publication. But those are pretty much the only sales figures in the book. The story of her finding her first agent and selling her first book, Strangers on a Train is not told directly. There are references to these events in other sections of the book but I itched for the whole story. Nor was the sale of the film rights to Hitchcock dwelt on—it’s a mere summation in the “Just the Facts” section at the back of the book. Much is made of her deal with the Swiss publisher Diogenes to handle world rights to her book but the specific details of the deal were not revealed.² For this publishing geek, it was very frustrating.

Lethem’s right about one thing though³ reading the bio has led me back to the books. To thinking about what made her such a good writer when she had so little understanding of, or compassion for, anyone but herself. Not that her lack of empathy doesn’t come through in the books. There’s a reason I can’t read more than three Highsmiths in a row without sinking into a deep depression. Bleak is too mild a word for the outlook.

Except for The Price of Salt which is the outlier Highsmith book and one of my favourites. Think I’ll be re-reading it first.

1. Sorry for being such a bore, people.
2. I get why but I’d've loved a hint. How much more than the usual 85% did Highsmith get?
3. Well, two, I also agree with his list of her best books. Though I would add The Price of Salt/Carol to the list.

Why do people find it so hard to love something and accept that it’s flawed?

Gone with the Wind is at once a tale of strong women and appallingly racist. Just as there were women who campaigned long and hard for women’s suffrage who were also members of the Klu Klux Klan. Being a feminist does not mean you can’t be racist. Alas.

When I was wee I read the book multiple times and saw the movie almost as often. To this day I can quote the novel’s opening lines: “Scarlett OHara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.” (No, I didn’t have to google that.) Until my discovery of Flowers in the Attic¹ there was no book I loved more than Gone with the Wind. I haven’t re-read it in more than a decade but I still know it better than any book other than Pride and Prejudice. I’m in a good position to unpick Meryment’s claims:

Scarlett O’Hara [is] a woman of substance. No cowering southern belle, here is a woman who is resourceful and resilient and does what she must to survive.

Yet critics and academics, in the seven decades since the film’s release, have been almost unanimous, and disapproving: Scarlett is no feminist but a damsel in distress who relies on feminine charms to get her way. She steals other women’s men, has an insatiable lust for Melanie’s dreary husband Ashley Wilkes and suffers from a chronic flirting problem. Worst of all, she allows Rhett to ravish her during a night of passion that she finds rather enjoyable.

Here’s the thing, all the above is true. Scarlett O’Hara is a woman of substance but throughout the course of the book she also relies on her feminine charms to get her way and has flirts with pretty much everyone who’s male and white. She is a multiple stealer of other women’s men—including her own sister’s—she does have an insatiable lust (which she confuses with true love) for the deadly dull Ashley Wilkes, and she does get ravished by Rhett in an extremely scary scene which (in the movie) cuts to her smiling and happy in the morning.²

All true.

As Meryment points out Scarlett O’Hara’s story begins when she’s sixteen and ends when she’s twenty-eight. During that time she lives through a war, sees many people she cares about die, loses two husbands, has three children, and goes from being a simpering southern belle to a shrewd business woman.

“Scarlett is a survivor,” says Toni Johnson-Woods, a professor of popular culture at the University of Queensland. “She’s the sort of person who would cut up the curtains to make a dress. She gets dirty. She works. She doesn’t actually do anything bad. She’s manipulative, but what person isn’t when they have to be?”

Johnson-Woods seems not to have read the same book I did. [Scarlett] doesn’t actually do anything bad. What now? Let’s leave aside all the lying and those two stolen husbands. I mean India Wilkes and Scarlett’s own sister, Suellen, clearly had it coming. Wanna keep your man? Then hold on to him tighter. Let’s put aside Scarlett’s multiple attempts to commit adultery with Ashley Wilkes.³ And let’s forget that Scarlett saw nothing wrong with slavery. She was sixteen when the war started and brought up to believe in such an evil system. But how about her using slave labour after the war is over in the form of convicts to work her saw mill and allowing her manager to beat them half to death? How’s that for an actually bad thing?

Now I happen to think that Scarlett O’Hara’s ethical impairment and selfishness is part of what makes her such a dynamic and believable literary creation. She lies, she cheats, she does pretty much whatever it takes to survive and save herself, her family and her land. But you don’t have to pretend that she never does anything bad to find her complex and three-dimensional. Many of my favourite literary creations—Mouse in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books, Highsmith’s Ripley, pretty much any character ever written by Jim Thompson—do many bad bad things. I don’t need to pretend that they’re good in order to enjoy reading about them.

Scarlett has many good qualities but she has plenty of bad ones too. Frankly I would not want her for a friend because she’s one of those women who only notices men. She doesn’t even realise what an amazing friend Melanie has been to her until Melanie’s on her death bed. Scarlett is not BFF material. And she’s not a feminist. She doesn’t care whether women get to vote or not, she doesn’t care about women as a group, only about herself and her family. She has no political consciousness at all.

Film critics also have been circumspect about Scarlett’s place as a feminist symbol, as well as horrified, in more enlightened times, by the glorification of the slave life on the southern plantations. As The Australian’s film critic Evan Williams noted in a 1981 review, published at the time of a re-release: “The film’s attitude to blacks (referred to constantly as ‘darkies’), to say nothing of its attitude to women, would scarcely find favour today. Slavery was glossed over; male authority taken for granted.”

Yet, for all its perceived flaws, the film and the novel are deeply loved, and remain the top-selling novel of all time (more than 30 million sales worldwide) and the highest grossing movie ($1,450,680,400 in box-office takings, adjusted for inflation). Now, in the US, where hardcore feminism has been decried for more than a decade, new perspectives about the film are emerging.

Evan Williams is spot on. Pointing out the film’s popularity does not change that. Lots of racist and sexist novels and films are deeply loved and do incredibly well. Success does not render a book or movie free of flaws.

Meryment writes “perceived flaws” as if to imply that Williams and other people who have criticised Gone with the Wind’s racism are just imagining it. We’re not. None of the black characters in the book are fully-realised, three-dimensional characters. None of them have lives or dreams or aspirations outside of O’Hara and her family. They live in order to serve their masters. Before and after the Civil War. The book and the film are caught up in a poisonously romantic view of slavery wherein the slaves were happy to be slaves, were miserable when the South lost the war, and just wished their masters would keep looking after them. It’s only the bad negroes who make trouble. (The book and film’s language, not mine.)

In Gone with the Wind the Klu Klux Klan are the good guys.

Yeah, right, we’re imagining the racism.

Why just look at the character of Mammy, says Meryment, she’s a strong character! That proves the book isn’t racist:

Of all the strong females, perhaps Mammy is the most galling for ardent critics of the film. Black, enslaved and conforming to 1930s stereotype of the loyal, usually overweight, woman who offered cheerful servitude to her owners, McDaniel’s Mammy is nevertheless a complex and confronting creation. Indomitable and opinionated, she largely does as she likes, whether her masters like it or not. (“I said I was going to Atlanta with you and going with you I is,” she tells Scarlett at one point.)

Mammy is every bit the stereotype. With no life other than to look after Scarlett, which the quote above proves. The reason she’s disobeying Scarlett is in order to look after her. Not to do something for herself like find her own kin. The only reason so many argue that Mammy breaks with the stereotype is because Hattie McDaniel was a wonderful actor, who transcended the extremely limited and belittling role. There’s no such respite from the stereotype in the book. (Don’t get me started on the character of Prissy.)

To echo Meryment’s language, it is galling that a book first published in 1936, when the civil rights movement in the USA was already underway, and turned into a movie in 1939—the year that Billie Holiday first performed and recorded “Strange Fruit” about lynching in the South—could be so astonishingly blind to the evil that is slavery. That it could spend a gazillion pages and hours glorifying a system that was built on the kidnapping and enforced labour of hundreds of thousands of people appalls me. The glorious south that Margaret Mitchell is so nostalgic for was built out of exploitation, murder, and rape. But it’s even more galling that here in 2009 there are still people trying to pretend that Gone with the Wind isn’t profoundly racist so they can enjoy all its other aspects.

Yes, Gone with the Wind is an amazing book and film.⁴ Yes, it’s the tale of two extraordinarily strong women, Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes, and their enduring friendship⁵. For many years I loved it. Feel free to continue loving it, but please don’t pretend that us critics are being unfair, or in some way misreading Gone with the Wind when we call it on its nostalgic longing for an era in which the white upper classes lived decadent useless lives dependent on the blood of black people.

We’re not.

1. I was twelve!
2. It freaked me out as a kid—he says he’s going to crush her skull like a walnut!—it still freaks me out.
3. Let’s even forget that wanting him is a crime against good taste.
4. It’s stood the test of time way better than Flowers in the Attic.
5. Even while Scarlett doesn’t realise they’re friends. Another flaw of hers: not very observant.

What I’m really wondering is how all those Hollywood luminaries could have signed that petition. Do they really want the world at large to think they have no problem with the rape of a thirteen year old girl?

Did they sign because all their mates did and not know what they were signing? Perhaps, they thought, it’s another save the whales or end global warming petition. This is my most charitable option. Better they be stupid or careless than consider rape to be nothing.

Do they believe that because they know and like Polanski that he must be capable of no wrong? What a valueless friendship that is. I value my friends precisely because they call me on my wrong doing and mistakes. Stand by your friends absolutely, but own it when they do wrong and pressure them to make amends.

Do they believe that artists can do no wrong? That the talented can steal and rape and murder with impunity? I hate to break it to them but genius is not a moral quality. No amount of great art excuses rape.

Far too often powerful, privileged people forget that rules apply to them too. They do this because far too often people like them, like Polanski, get away with rape. They begin to think that this is their right. It’s our job to remind them that no one has that right. No matter how famous or how rich or how high up they are in government.

So, Tilda Swinton and the rest of you? Not getting more of my money any time soon.

Update: In the comments below Sarah points out that many of the people who signed that petition are not, in fact, part of Hollywood. Many are part of the European film industry. Woody Allen and others don’t make Hollywood films. Salman Rushdie and Paul Auster are writers.

There are many, many people who work in Hollywood who are appalled by the petition. The people who signed the petition are not representative.

I know that the title of this post is going to lead to some comments insisting that it’s not true that white writers have any advantages and that many white people are just as oppressed as people of colour. I don’t want to have that conversation. So I’m going to oppress the white people who make those comments by deleting them. I don’t do it with any malice. I do it because I want to have a conversation about white privilege in publishing. We can have the discussion about class privilege and regional privilege and other kinds of privilege some other time. Those other privileges are very real. But I don’t want this discussion to turn into some kind of oppression Olympics.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t, Redux

There were some wonderful responses to my post attempting to debunk the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” canard. But I got the impression that some people understood me as saying that it’s fine for white people to write about non-white people and that any criticism for doing so is no big deal. Writers get criticised for all sorts of different things. Whatcha gunna do?

I did not mean that at all. I’m very sorry that my sloppy writing led to such a misunderstanding. I think the criticism a white writer receives for writing characters who are a different race or ethnicity, especially by people of that race or ethnicity, is a very big deal. We white writers have to listen extremely carefully. Neesha Meminger wrote a whole post about why in which she talks about how hard it is for many non-white writers to get published:

I know how tiring it is to hear over and over from editors or agents (who are, in almost all cases, white) that they “just didn’t connect with,” or “just didn’t fall in love with” the characters of a mostly-multicultural book. And, while I know these can be standard industry responses to manuscripts, the fact of the matter is that white authors are getting published. White authors writing about PoC are getting published—sometimes to great acclaim—while authors of colour are still not (in any significant numbers).

Mayra Lazara Dole makes a similar point:

Many POC feel you are stealing their souls. We’ve never, ever had your same opportunities. As an africanam friend would say, “the times of white people painting their faces black in hollywood are over.” Why don’t you sit back and allow us to get our work published while you keep writing what you know until we catch up? Shouldn’t it be about equal opportunity? If so, please consider giving us a chance to make our mark (about 90 percent of all books are written by white authors).

Now before you get your back up and start spouting about how you have a right to write whatever you want. Neesha agrees:

So, to my white brothers and sisters: certainly, write your story. Populate it with a true reflection of the world you live in. Bring to life strong and powerful characters of all colours. Do so with the ferocity of an ally and the tenderness of family. But please don’t be so cavalier as to shrug and say, “I did my best, and frock you if you don’t like it—plenty of your people thought I did a great job.” Take the criticism in as well. After the urge to defend yourself has passed, pick through the feedback and see if there’s some learning there. Because the reality is that masses upon masses of “our people” have absorbed toxic levels of self-hatred from the images and messages (and *inaccurate representations*) that surround us. Many of us have learned to believe that we are less than, not worthy, undeserving—and are simply grateful to be allowed to exist among you without fear.

So does Mayra Lazara Dole:

On the other hand, having been born in a communist country with censorship, please, write what you want, but just know that even though you have every right to write whatever you wish, you’ll hurt some of us. Many POC’s won’t be as forgiving, but some will. To some POC’s it will feel as if you are stealing from them . . . Don’t you want POC to write our own books?

So do I. Hey, all my books so far have had non-white protags (follow the link for my reasons why). Neither Neesha nor Mayra want to censor white writers, they want us to be very careful of what we do, and they want us to own it.

That’s what I’ve tried to do, but I haven’t always succeeded. Writing, thinking beyond my privilege, these are things I struggle with every single day of my life. I was not standing here from on high saying, “Here’s how to do it.”¹ I was saying, “Here’s what I’m wrestling with.”

What are the advantages that white writers writing about people of colour have that PoC writers don’t have?

First of all (assuming that you can actually write) your odds of getting published are better than theirs.² No, I don’t have statistics to back me up, but I have a lot of anecdotal evidence. Of friends and acquaintances who were rejected by editors and agents who already had their one African or Asian author. If you’re the only brown writer on a list than you have to be a lot better than all the other brown writers competing for that one slot. The hurdles that many non-white writers have to jump to get published in the USA are higher than they are for white writers.³

Here’s another big advantage: If you, as a white writer, produce an excellent book about people who aren’t like you odds are high that your ability to do so will be seen as a sign of your virtuosity and writerly chops, which it is. However, non-white writers rarely get the same response, even though it’s just as hard for them. I say that not just because I think all good writing is hard to achieve, but because every time you write a nuanced character who isn’t white you’re writing against a long, long tradition of stereotyped characters in Western literature. That’s hard to do no matter what your skin colour. And if you’re a writer working within in a different writing tradition and trying to make it succeed within the English-language novel tradition you’re doing something even harder.

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying that we white writers should feel guilty about any of this. Guilt is a pointless emotion. White writers who’ve written about people of colour and won acclaim and awards don’t have to hand their prizes back. That would change nothing.

What I am saying is that we need to be aware of our privilege and listen to criticism and act upon it. We need to do what we can to change things. The more novels with a diversity of characters that are published and succeed in the marketplace the more space there will be. The more people who can find themselves in books, the more readers we’ll all have, and the more opportunities there’ll be for writers from every background. Of course, it’s not just the writers who need to be more diverse, but everyone in publishing, from the interns to agents to the folks in sales, marketing, publicity, and editorial, to the distributors and booksellers.

There are many wonderful books by writers of colour. Read them, talk about them, buy them for your friends. Point them out to your editors and agents. Be part of changing the culture and making space for lots of different voices. The problem is not so much what white people write; it’s that so few other voices are heard. If the publishing industry were representative of the population at large we wouldn’t need to have this conversation.

1. And I’m very sorry if it came across that way.
2. Yes, it’s hard for all people to get published. I know. It took me twenty years to do so. But add to that the prevailing notion in the publishing industry that books about people of colour don’t sell and it becomes even harder.
3. The hurdles they have to jump to have the time and resources to write in the first place are typically also higher, but that’s a whole other story. Don’t get me started on the differences I’ve seen on tour in the USA between predominately black schools versus predominately white ones.

Damned if you do, they say, damned if you don’t.

To which I can only say, and I mean this nicely, “Please!”

What exactly are you risking? Who exactly is damning you? Which of your previously published novels have attracted no criticisms and no damnation? Cause that’s amazing. You wrote a book no one critcised? Awesome. Please teach me that trick!

Every single book I’ve published has displeased someone. I’ve been accused of promoting teenage pregnancy, homosexuality, and underage drinking. Every single one of my books has caused at least a few people to tell me that I stuffed various things up: my descriptions of Sydney, of NYC, of mathematics (absolutely true), my Oz characters don’t speak like proper Aussies, and my USians don’t talk like proper Yanquis. My teenagers sound too young or too old and are too smart or too stupid. I did my best, but some think that was not good enough.

That’s the risk you take when you write a book.

If you do not have the knowledge, resources, research, or writing skills to write people who are different from you, then don’t. People may well criticise you for that. They’ll also criticise you for having some of your characters speak their notion of ungrammatical English¹. And for not having enough vampires. Whatever.² Write what you’re good at. Lots and lots of writers pretty much only write about themselves and their friends. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a famous example. There are many many others. That’s fine. Own it. And do it as well as you can.

If you, as a white writer, decide to write people of a different hue to yourself then you should do your damnedest to get it right. But know that no matter how well researched your book, no matter how well vetted by multiple knowledgeable readers it is, there will always be people who think you buggered it up and misrepresented them. All you can do is write the best, most thoroughly researched book you possibly can. After all, don’t you do that with every book you write? You don’t write your historicals with Wikipedia as your only source, do you? Right then.

What should you do when you are criticised?

Listen. Learn. Even if you think they’re insane and completely wrong.

Figure out how to avoid the same egregious mistakes in your next book. But remember that your next book will also be criticised. That’s how it goes.

Do not have a hissy fit and say you’ll never write about anyone who isn’t white again. Do not insult those criticising you.

Say you, as a white American, write a novel with many Thai-American characters and a Thai-American reader criticises you for getting something wrong yet another Thai-American reader praises you for getting the exact same thing right. Who do you believe?

What do you do when two white readers disagree about stuff in your books? Do you assume that all white people are the same? Perhaps it’s time to stop assuming that all Thai-Americans are the same and have the same opinions and experiences. Thailand’s a big country with a wide range of ethnicities, religions, cuisines and everything else. The experiences of the Thai diaspora in the USA is going to be just as varied. Some Thai Americans will think you got it right, some will think you got it wrong. That’s how it goes.

Keep in mind that Thai-Americans writing about Thai-Americans are also criticised and told they get it wrong. No one is immune from criticism. No one is immune from getting it wrong for at least some of their readers. We all do it.

Writing is hard. No matter what you write about. You will be damned no matter what you do. But that has nothing to do with you being white, that has to do with you having the arrogance to be a writer, and publish what you write for other people to read. Your readers get to judge you. That’s just how it goes. Your job is to be a grown up about what you do and how people respond to you. That’s really hard too. Trust me, I know.

Thus endeth the rant.

1. Trust me, I get that one all the time
2. I am SO over vampires. Except for the good ones.

Hmmm. I think that sentence demands a bit more context. I keep seeing comments like, “OMG, Buffy is amazing and Joss Whedon was only in his early 30s when he first created it.” Or Arthur Rimbaud was one of the most influential French poets ever and he quit writing when he was 19!”

There must be something wrong with me cause I think, “So what?”

Either the art is good or it isn’t. Who cares how old the person was who created it? Doesn’t make it any better.

Not to mention that there’s an argument that the only reason people are still talking about Arthur Rimbaud is because he wrote all his poetry before he was nineteen. According to this argument his work was amazing for a teenager and that’s the only reason we remember him today. Well, that, and his truly crazy life, which makes for astonishingly entertaining biographies.¹ And the fact that his lover, Paul Verlaine, was a one-man publicity campaign, who would not shut up about Rimbaud’s supposed genius.

*Heh hem* I digress. Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer amazing because Joss Whedon was only in his early thirties² when he started working on it or is it amazing because it’s amazing?³ I say it’s simply amazing and Whedon’s age is irrelevant.⁴

If a book or a poem or a movie or a computer game or a painting or whatever blows you away why does it matter how old the person was when they made it?⁵ If they were 62 does it stop being amazing? How about 72? If they were only 20 does that make it more amazing? Why? Explain to me cause I don’t get it.

Some people write their best work when they’re young. Some when they’re old. Some when they’re middle aged. Some are pretty consistent throughout their career. Some, like Georgette Heyer, have mixed careers, dotted with marvellous and indifferent work throughout. No matter how old you are you can only do the best you can at that momet in time. Not to mention that no matter how old you are, what you think is your best work, others may think is your worst.⁶

I think what bothers me about this constant, “OMG this book is amazing! And the author was only 12!” is that it undercuts the idea that those of us who make a living writing (or creating other art) work really hard at and strive to improve. It feed into the myth of genius, of someone just producing great work full blown out of no where, without an apprenticeship, without any hard yakka, or learning, or improving. I happen not to believe in genius. I don’t believe art comes out of nowhere.

I do, however, understand the feeling of panic when you realise that, say, Georgette Heyer’s first novel was published when she was a teenager. By the time she was fifty years old she’d published close to 40 novels. Many of my favourite writers have prodigious and enviable outputs. Patricia Highsmith for one. I still haven’t read all her novels and short stories. Diana Wynne Jones has also published an astonishing number of wonderful books and they keep coming. Yay! On the other hand, Octavia Butler, Jean Rhys and Angela Carter have a relatively small volume of work. All of which I treasure and clutch to my chest. My favourite Jean Rhys novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, was published when she was in her seventies. If I can write half so well when I’m in my seventies, well, I’ll be very happy indeed.

I do envy writers like Wynne Jones and Heyer. I’ve published five novels, but my odds of writing another thirty-five before I turn fifty are, well, forget about it. Or even before I’m seventy. I’m not a super fast writer. I was able to keep up the one-novel-a-year pace for five years and in those years I was trying to write two a year. But next year there’ll be no new novel from me. I doubt I’ll ever write as fast as one a year again. But I have just as many ideas as I ever did. Sometimes I freak out realising that I may not live to write them all.⁷

But never for very long. Because, honestly, there are other things I’m more worried about not doing before I die. Like spending enough time with the people I love. Doing as much good as I can. Watching my friends’ children grow up. Eating more mangosteens. Stuff like that.

1. I recommend the Edmund Wilson one. No, I haven’t read it. But, hey, Edmund Wilson.
2. And when did accomplishing something in your early thirties make you a prodigy? Please.
3. Except for those of who don’t think it was amazing.
4. Except for all of season seven, and too much of seasons four, five and six, which are the opposite of amazing.
5. For the purposes of this rant, I’m ignoring the fact that many works of art are not created by a single person—Whedon did not make Buffy alone—especially not movies or television or computer games.
6. I think the best novel I’ve written is the first novel I wrote. It’s unpublished.
7. You know when I’m not freaking out about this world I live in melting into the sea.

“Shooting Stars,” a new collaboration between LeBron James, probably the greatest basketball player alive, and Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights,” is a different kind of book. It avoids speaking about James’s professional career with the Cleveland Cavaliers (he was the National Basketball Association’s most valuable player last season) almost entirely. And since James skipped college, well, ixnay on that too.

“Ixnay”? Seriously?

“Shooting Stars” reads like a better-than-average young-adult novel, “Stand by Me” with breakaway dunks and long, arching three-pointers. I suspect it will find its best and most eager audience among the teenagers and preteenagers for whom James is a deserving role model.

Let’s set aside the fact that Stand By Me is a movie not a YA novel¹ and have a look at “better-than-average young-adult novel.” Given the lukewarmness of the whole review it’s pretty clear that Garner does not think much of YA. Though if he thinks Stand By Me is a YA novel then it’s more likely he hasn’t read much YA average or otherwise. The whole thing reminds me of Maureen Dowd dissing adult chicklit based on her reading of a satirical YA novel. The New York Times seems pretty hazy on what YA is.

Eric Luper suggests that we need to run a remedial seminar for them and make them read some better-than-average YA. What do youse lot think? And what should we put on the reading list? I suggest five or so books but they all have to be completely different from each other. Here’s my off the top of my head list. I made a point of not including any books by my friends:²

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith (historical)
Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis (contemporary realism/comedy)
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey (fantasy)
All American Girl by Meg Cabot (chicklit)
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (science fiction)
If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson (contemporary realism/romance)

What would your reading list to school The New York Times book people about YA look like? Remember each book has to be really different.

Update: Scott says I should point out that this review really made me want to read Shooting Stars. So, yes, it’s condescending but now I really want to read the book. But, come on, I’m a basketball fanatic I was going to read it anyway.

1. Based on a short story by Stephen King which is also not a YA novel.
2. I’ve met Cabot and Duey and they are both delightful but I don’t know them well enough that I feel biased recommending their work.

I am not.

One of the many things I adore about Avatar is how incredibly rich and complex the world of Avatar is. This is largely because it was based on various Asian cultures. None of the characters in Avatar are white.

Here’s what the show’s creators have to say about it in an interview from 2005:

1. How did you come up with the Avatar?

We came up for the concept for “Avatar” 3 years ago. Nickelodeon wanted to make a “legends & lore” type of show with a kid hero. That’s a genre we are very interested in, but we wanted to create a mythology that was based on Eastern culture, rather than Western culture. Although “Avatar” isn’t based on a specific Asian myth, we were inspired by Asian mythology, as well as Kung Fu, Yoga, and Eastern Philosophy. We were also inspired by Anime in general. We wanted to create a story that inspired people’s imaginations and that had elements of comedy, drama, and action.

2. You guys are not Asian so how did you come up with such an Asian cartoon?

We read a lot about Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese history. We also have several consultants who work for the show—a cultural consultant that reviews all the scripts; a Kung Fu consultant who helps choreograph all the bending moves so that they are accurate to the style on which they are based; and a Chinese calligrapher who does all the signs and posters in the show. We don’t use any written English words in the show.

Avatar has been hugely popular among kids of all races. There was no backlash against an all-Asian show. Much as those who watch anime don’t freak out at the paucity of white characters. Yet, somehow the Hollywood producers think the live action version has to be white washed. Except for the villians, of course, it’s okay for them to be brown. I think they’re wrong.

I’m not the only one who’s upset at the absurd casting choices of the movie version. There are several communities that have been protesting it.

Sadly, though there seem to be just as many fans who don’t care that the movie version has white actors playing Aang, Katara and Sokka. Glockgal offers a possible explanation:

For people who’ve never learned/seen/been exposed to anything Asian beyond fortune cookies and sweet-and-sour chicken balls, I suddenly understand that when they watched the cartoon, all they see is ‘fantasy’. All the architecture, clothing, food, writing, names, movements—EVERYTHING that is so plainly and clearly Asian to us? Is just to them . . . a fantasy. It’s all made-up. They don’t know that so much of the world is based on real cultures, they don’t get how much attention to detail and research the creators put into the cartoon, because they’ve NEVER SEEN THESE CULTURES, IN REAL LIFE.

I will not be going to see the movie version. I’m sick of white washing. I’m sick of Hollywood taking the things I love and transforming them into generic pap. I want them to make more films that reflect the diversity of the world I live in. I don’t understand why that’s such a huge ask.

“Look, people thought I was going to be a huge failure, but then I got kind of lucky and made it. And I had and have lots of amazing friends, and we’ve seen each other’s careers go up and down. Take my advice: don’t go comparing yourself to other people. You will go insane. It’s pointless. Your fortunes may rise and fall, depending on all kinds of things you have no control over. Keep your friends. Never compare all the outward markers of success. Do what you love, because that’s all you really get and that’s all that matters and that’s all that will ever really work. And don’t be an as$h&^e.”

It’s doesn’t matter what game you’re in, judging yourself solely by external measures will do your head in. You are not a good writer because you get good reviews or because you’re a bestseller or a prize winner.

You can continue to work hard and write your best and yet stop getting good reviews¹ and prizes and spots on bestseller lists. If you depend on those measures to determine your worth you are in for a world of pain.

As Mr Murray and Maureen say you have no control over that external stuff.² Forget about it. You are not a better person cause you sell more than your friends. You are not a worse person because you’re never short listed for prizes. Concentrate on doing the absolute best you can in whatever field you’re in. Because if your eyes are only on the prize, all the joy and pleasure in writing (or whatever) will disappear.

If you do get lucky and your work is recognised, make sure you thank the people who gave you the time and space and support in order to do your absolute best: your family, your friends, your colleagues etc. etc.

Thus endeth the sermon.

1. Or any reviews at all, which is much worse.
2. And if you did have control and could give yourself prizes and good reviews and huge sales, what would be the point?

• Some people just love to be outraged
• Many journalists don’t do even basic research

Both Johnson and Lanagan’s books are for teenagers. Bermudez is billed as being for 12 year olds and up and Tender Morsels as for 14 and up. Yet those being oh-so-very-shocked! insist on referring to them as books for children. They’re not. Those articles are flat out wrong or, worse, lying.

At least the rant in the Daily Mail is by someone who read at least some of the book. Even though their reading of Tender Morsels has zero in common with the Tender Morsels I read. In the Fox piece (I can’t call it reporting) it was clear that the reporter had not read Bermudez and that the outraged ones had at best skimmed the book looking for the word “sex”. Because they failed to notice that no sex takes place in Bermudez. There is nothing anyone could get offended by unless they’re homophobes who freak out at two girls falling in love.

Why do the outraged have so little interest in finding out who these books are aimed at? Or in so many cases don’t even read them?¹ The Daily Mail mocks the publisher of Tender Morsels for pointing out it’s aimed at older teens. Which is utterly surreal because the publisher is telling the truth. The outraged have no interest in learning about YA or understanding the difference between it and children’s literature. They don’t want to understand the context for the book. They don’t want to know that there’s a very simple solution if you’re concerned a book is too mature for your child: read the book first. All they care about is being outraged. They don’t want the fact that Tender Morsels is not marketed to ten year olds to get in the way of that delicious outrage.

Well, I am outraged by their outrage. Or I would be if I could be bothered and didn’t have a novel to finish.

1. Yes, there have been campaigns to ban books because of the book’s title.

Though I have seen authors respond to positive reviews in comment threads and unintentionally shut the conversation down because everyone panicked on realising that the author was watching. That’s why I no longer drop in to thank a blogger for a positive review. But I definitely don’t think it’s a terrible thing.

Walter Jon Williams talkde about how annoying some online amateur reviewers can be:

Some of them are just bad readers. They miss major plot points and then complain that the plot makes no sense, or they say that something is impossible when it’s something I’ve actually done, or they complain that a plot twist is unmotivated when I’ve foreshadowed it sixteen dozen ways . . . these guys I’m sometimes tempted to respond to. Not in abusive way, of course, just by way of information. (”If you would do yourself the kindness to reread Page 173, you would realize that your chief complaint is without foundation.”) That sort of thing.

Sad fact: most readers are crap at it. We read too fast and carelessly. We judge books by what we expected to read so often don’t see what is actually there. We get mad at books for not being the book we wanted them to be. We read when in a bad mood and blame the bad mood on the book. Most of us suck at noticing all the carefully laid foreshadowing, backstory, clues that the hardworking authors wrote for us and then we have the gall to blame them for our own stupidity in not seeing them. Damned readers!

Sadly, there’s zero percentage in going after them and pointing out their stupidity no matter how much we writers ache to do so.³ Because this is the biggest power imbalance of all. Amateur reviewers on good reads or Amazon or Barnes & Noble or on their almost zero-trafficked blog are the least powerful criticism that can be made. Sometimes authors do attack them. I heard from a blogger who wrote a negative review of [redacted well-known author] and had said author set their fans on the blogger who was inundated with hate mail for months. Authors, DON’T DO THAT!

And reviewers please don’t do the opposite. Adrienne Vrettos said:

Once I had a reviewer who had written a not very nice review in a widely read trade magazine approach me at a crowded event to tell me – in detail – what exactly she didn’t like about my book.

I had *no* idea how to handle it. I stammered out a ‘thank you’ for reviewing the book, which now sounds suspiciously like ‘thank you sir, may I have another?’, and hurried away.

How extraordinarily rude. While I’ve never (thank, Elvis!) had anyone tell me in person about their hate for my books I’ve had reviewers write me with their lack of love. I have no idea what these people want from us authors. To make sure that we read their review? Why does that matter to them? Reviews of books are not for the authors, they’re for potential readers. So leave us authors alone! Thank you!

Robin Wasserman said:

I have to admit that I miss the era of loud, passionate, messy literary feuds, so have been pretty entertained by this whole mess. Norman Mailer vs Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe vs Updike/Mailer/Irving, Dale Peck vs everyone…those were the good old days. (Authors — and it seems important to note that Hoffman’s reviewer is also an author in her own right — still have plenty of books and authors that we despise, we just do our despising behind closed doors.) And this morning I discovered that after Alice Hoffman published a horrible review of Richard Ford’s “The Sportswriter,” Ford got a gun and shot a bunch of holes through Hoffman’s latest opus. (http://s7y.us/uqr) So maybe she can be forgiven for her misunderstanding of “appropriate” behavior!

Sure. Feuds can be extraordinarily entertaining. I enjoyed those spats mightily. You’ll note that most of them were between equals with roughly the same reputation and access to media. Most of the flare ups in the past few years have been well-known author going after much less well-known reviewer and/or punters on Amazon. Which I happen to think it’s flat out awful.

And while I enjoy those stoushes between equals, I enjoy them in the same way I do seeing what hideous outfit Chloe Sevigny or Gwyneth Paltrow are wearing right now. Fun for me, sure, but embarrassing for them. I enjoy their sartorial mistakes mightily just as I enjoyed Mailer and Vidal etc posturing. But I still think they’re arrogant self-obsessed drop kicks. I will always advise other authors not to follow their lead.

1. Yes, that is a joke.
2. And that’s a whole other thing. I have seen authors go berko over a starred review that had one negative phrase in it: “while occasionally overwrought”.
3. And, boy, do we.

But what I think I really mean is that most authors have more power than the reviewer. Often reviewers aren’t as well known as the person they’re reviewing. So when the disgruntled writer says, “What about my rights? Why can’t I respond?” The answer is that you can. But what will it gain you? Besides you already have a reply to your critics: your books. Your last book, your current book, your future books.

Why does an established writer with an army of books feel the need to go after a critic who happens to not like their latest book? They have a much bigger audience than that critic does. Many more people will read the book in question than the bad review. It’s madness.

Even when the author is brand new and has only one book what will they achieve by going after a critic? They’ll make themselves look small and petty minded and incapable of taking criticism. If you’re irked by a bad review respond by making your next book even better.

I have yet to see anything good come out of an author turning on a specific critic.

Today’s piece by Janet Maslin on this summer’s books by women was astonishing. On the one hand there’s this:

The “Commencement” characters are savvy about, among other things, feminism and publishing. “When a woman writes a book that has anything to do with feelings or relationships, it’s either called chick lit or women’s fiction, right?” one of them asks. “But look at Updike, or Irving. Imagine if they’d been women. Just imagine. Someone would have slapped a pink cover onto ‘Rabbit at Rest,’ and poof, there goes the … Pulitzer.”

They’re right of course. But this is the season when prettily designed books flood the market and compete for female readers.

Too true. Women’s books are routinely lumped together even when they’re vastly different. They’re not deemed to be proper literature just because they’re written by women. And apparently this is especially true in summer which is a time “when literary and lightweight books aimed at women become hard to tell apart.”

So Maslin agrees that women’s writing is frequently compartmentalised and dismmissed. And yet she proceeds to do exactly that for for the rest of the article by lumping together eleven vastly different books and finding tenuous connections between them. All of it under the heading The Girls of Summer. Bless you, sub editor for spelling it out: it’s an article about the frivolous time of year and the frivolous gender. All is clear.

Where is the NYT piece on the boys of summer? That lumps together vastly different books by men. Oh, silly me, that would never happen because boys write real books and girls write summer fluff which is pretty much identical despite the different subject matter:

Amid such confusion, here’s a crib sheet for this season’s crop of novels and memoirs. It does mix seriously ambitious books (“Shanghai Girls”) with amiably schlocky ones (“Queen Takes King”) and includes one off-the-charts oddity (“My Judy Garland Life”). It’s even got a nascent Julia Roberts movie. But the common denominator is beach appeal, female variety. Each of these books takes a supportive, girlfriendly approach to weathering crises, be they global (World War II) or domestic (dead husband on the kitchen floor), great or small.

Let me repeat the key bit: “the common denominator is beach appeal, female variety.”

What now?

I’m confused. Is Maslin saying that no matter what subject these women write about their books are automatically light disposable beach reads because women wrote them? Or is she saying they’re automatically beach reads because of the way the publisher has decided to package the book:

Their covers use standard imagery: sand, flowers, cake, feet, houses, pastel colors, the occasional Adirondack chair. Their titles (“Summer House,” “Dune Road,” “The Wedding Girl,” “Trouble”) skew generic. And they tend to be blurbed exclusively by women.

If only the publishers had given them serious covers with non-generic titles and got a bloke to blurb them then Maslin would have been able to review their books separately and not as “women’s fiction”. Damned publishers confusing poor critics’ brains.

I think my head just exploded.

I’m actually a reviewer for Publishers Weekly and while I’ve read some things that were kind of poorly constructed, I’ve never had even an urge to be even half this harsh, not even secretly if I strongly disliked the book. Too much work goes into a book for anything to warrant this kind of nastiness and seriously nothing is so bad it deserves to be called “a candy-coated turd.”

I have condemned books in stronger language than that. When I hate a book, I really hate a book. I totally get writing such vicious reviews. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I don’t write reviews and only discuss books on this blog if I love them: the knowledge that were I to write an honest review of a book I hate I would most definitely hurt other writers’ feelings, alienate their fans, and lose friends. Also the YA world is small and writing a bad review of another YA writer’s book leaves you open to charges of sour grapes. Life’s too short.

I say that as someone who has received very mean reviews. I know exactly how much it hurts. Reviews have made me cry and scream and kick my (thankfully imaginary) dog (poor Elvis, he knows I love him). But I believe people are moved to write such nasty reviews because of the intensity of their relationship with books. That’s awesome!

I feel that too. When I read a book I was expecting to love and it sucks I feel betrayed. When I read a book in a beloved series and the characters are suddenly transformed beyond recognition and there seems to have been no editing at all and the writing has gone to hell, I am OUTRAGED. I want to kick the editor and the author. On the scale of things, I think writing a mean review about the book is way better than assault.

Passionate reviews, good or bad, are fabulous. It’s great that people care enough to rant or rave about a book. I don’t think it’s unprofessional to vent your spleen at a book. Some eviscerations of books are wonderfully well written and a total pleasure to read. And some passionate raves about books are appallingly badly constructed. One of the reviews of my books that embarrasses me the most was a rave. An extraordinarily badly written rave in a professional location¹ which so mischaracterised my book that it was unrecognisable. The reviewer clearly loved the book. They also clearly didn’t understand it. No review has annoyed me as much as that one.

On the other hand, my favourite review ever remains the one written by a punter on the B&N site which said Magic or Madness was like a bad Australian episode of Charmed. Makes me laugh every time I think of it.

An unprofessional review is one that attacks the author directly. But the problem is that most writers conflate themselves with their books so that many consider an attack on their work to be an attack on them. It’s really hard for us writers to be clear that the reviewer is calling our book “a candy-coated turd” not us. But learn it we must! Part of this job is having your work assessed by people who are not going to be kind. No one owes you a good review.

A site like the Worst Review Ever is an excellent place for authors with bruised egos to vent, but I really hope it doesn’t have a dampening effect on online YA reviewers. If you hate a book, say so. Figure out exactly what it was that bugged you about it and let rip. You’re doing all of us readers a service. Even if we totally disagree with you. One of the most useful parts about Twilight’s success has been the vigorous debate all over the intramawebs about the book’s worth and effect on its readers. I’ve learned a lot from it. I’d really hate for reviewers worried about an author’s feelings to dilute their passion. Bugger the author’s feelings. You’re not writing reviews for them, you’re writing your reviews for us readers.

Readers, you (we) have the right to hate!

And also the right to change our minds at a later date when we read the book and discover it didn’t suck after all. Or vice versa.

Authors, you know what’s worse than a bad review? No reviews at all.

1. I’m not saying whether it was online or off.

There are people who are completely wedded to the Latin-ification of English grammar that began in the 1700s, thus they are wedded to “he” as the universal pronoun, believe that infinitives must not be split, and are deeply in love with the subjunctive mood, which is on its way out in English.¹

There are those who are appalled by changes in the spelling and meaning of words. They’re outraged that “alright” is becoming as common a spelling as “all right.”² They mourn the loss of the distinct meaning of the word “disinterest” etc etc.

There are those still wedded to what their English/MFA teacher taught them in primary school/university. Never use passive voice! Never end or begin a sentence with a conjunction! Avoid adverbs! Use adjectives sparingly!

A large chunk of my university training was in linguistics. I was trained in descriptivist traditions. That is, I was learning how to describe language use not how to police it. We never discussed wrong usage ever. That concept just didn’t exist. I studied how various different groups used language. We looked at language acquisition in small children as well as those learning English for the first time as adults. We looked at the way language changes. How what was once non-standard becomes standard and vice versa. Things like that.

I learned to listen to what people really said and to think about how and why. This is reflected in the novels I write. I use “alright” in dialogue because that’s what I hear many people saying, not “all right.” Particularly younger speakers, which is who most of my characters are. Many of my characters split infinitives, don’t use subjunctive, don’t say “whom” and thus commit what some consider crimes against language. Yes, I have gotten letters to that effect.

It is fascinating how intensely invested people are in language use. Especially writers. Whenever I discuss this with writer friends we don’t get very far because many of them are wedded to one or more of the uses I observe disappearing. Don’t defend the “alright” spelling in front of John Scalzi, for instance. I get that passion. I’m sad about “disinterest” losing its specific meaning too. But not that sad. There are other ways to say the same thing, which don’t confuse as many people. Sadly, they’re usually longer and less elegant.

I’m as invested as they are in my understanding of how language works and how it is deployed, which is why I get into so many heated discussions with my writer friends and protracted battles with editors, coypeditors and proofreaders, who are almost all prescriptivist. Like Geoffrey Pullum, I think The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is an amusing but insane set of self-contradicting rules: if you try to match rule with examples your head will explode. But I know people who find Strunk & White useful and have learned to write clearly from it.

English is a contradictory sprawling mess. Any attempt to map it out with a set of rules is doomed to self-contradiction and insanity. Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is as bad as Strunk & White. But has also been useful to many floundering in the mess that is English. Even attempts to merely describe the language are doomed. It’s too big, too unwieldy and growing too fast.

That’s part of why the English language makes me so happy.³ I can’t spell it very well, according to many I abuse its grammar rules, but English lets me break it open, pull out new words, mash up old ones. I get to play with how it looks and sounds and feels.

Like those who stand tall to defend English from the likes of me, I love it.

Just, you know, my love is more fun. ⁴

1. Though I will confess that I am using subjunctive a lot in my 1930s novel, whose omni narrator is on the pompous side.
2. (For the record, I think “alright” and “all right” are often used as two different words and deploy them thus in my books, giving my copyeditors major headaches.
3. Not that I have many points of comparison given that I’ve never been completely fluent in any other language. I had a decent grasp of Kriol when I was very little but that’s long gone. I learned some Bahasa Indonesia in high school and first year uni. Also mostly gone. And then learned Spanish while living there for five months many years ago. My Spanish is also disappearing from lack of use.
4. That smiley isn’t going to save me from the haters, is it?

A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”

What she said. It’s always puzzled me that there’s so much emphasis on romantic love and family and so little on friendship. Don’t get me wrong, I come from a very close knit family. I count my parents and my sister amongst my closest friends. And yet my non-family friends have been extraordinarily important to me over the years and helped get me through some really tough times. They’ve definitely been more important to me than any of my romantic partners (other than Scott who is my best friend).

I have friends I’ve been close to for more than twenty years. I’ve never been with any romantic partner that long. The worst breakup of my life was with a friend not a romantic partner. I know I am not alone in this. When I’m miserable I am IM or email my friends. “Tell me something happy!” I’ll demand and they do. When I have good news there are more than a dozen people that I simply HAVE TO TELL.

Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.

“People with stronger friendship networks feel like there is someone they can turn to,” said Karen A. Roberto, director of the center for gerontology at Virginia Tech. “Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.

Don’t you love that? Friends make mountains less steep. Mine have made my life immeasurably better. Bless you all!

One of the many reasons I love YA books so much is that many of them are about friendship. It’s no accident that the most important relationships in the Magic or Madness trilogy and How To Ditch Your Fairy are between the protags and their friends.

What are your favourite friendships in books?

THERE’S a lot at stake in the world of books and writing and publishing. Our industry is blossoming. We’re selling great books at home and exporting our writers in unprecedented numbers. We have a superb retail environment, with a dynamic independent sector, and a competitive printing industry that generates significant numbers of skilled jobs. There’s never been a better time to be a writer or publisher in Australia.

He’s spot on. Publishing in Australia is doing great. It’s making money and employing people. Unlike, say, the car industry, which the Australian government has been bailing out for years, we’re not asking the government for a handout. We’re not asking for a single dollar. We just want to retain a law that has helped the Australian publishing industry thrive since 1991.

Introducing parallel importing is not going to reduce the price of books in Australia. One of the book chains most heavily in favour of it already charges above the recommended retail price for bestselling books. If they really cared about making books cheaper would they do that? Removing parallel importing will increase their profit margin with little or no benefit to book consumers like myself.

The draft report’s proposal for the publication territorial copyright to expire after a year amounts to a stealth introduction of parallel importing. As Heyward says many books do much better in their second year than their first:

At Text, many of our best backlist titles have their biggest sales after the first 12 months. It’s a typical pattern. Kate Grenville’s The Secret River sold five times as many copies in its second year as in its first. We published Peter Temple’s masterpiece The Broken Shore in August 2005 and it has now sold 10 times as many copies as it did in its first year. Both of these writers are bestsellers in Britain.

It’s true for books that aren’t bestsellers. Magic or Madness sold better in its second year than its first, so has every book in the trilogy, and I sure am hoping that will also be true for How to Ditch Your Fairy.

I want my books and those of all Australian writers to be as protected as our British, Canadian and USian colleagues’ books are.¹ I really don’t think that’s a lot to ask.

There’s information here if you want to submit a response to the Commission’s draft report.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, but are a little bit interested, you can find more info here, here and here.

1. I’d also like to point out that it’s not just Australian authors who benefit from Australia retaining its territorial copyright. Australia is a very strong book market, I know many non-Australian authors who earn more from their Australian editions than from their UK editions. We Australians love to read.

Actually, worse than that—it make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I watch with pursed lips and my arms crossed tight.

I don’t feel like they’re exploring the sexism and racism of the period I feel that they’re skirting a line towards reproducing it. Why are there no black characters? The black cleaner or lift operator could easily have been major characters. Instead they’re rarely seen and less often heard. There are many more female characters but they don’t lift above the level of a cipher. I don’t know who they are or what they’re thinking and none of them gets anywhere near as much screen time as Donald Draper.

Everything revolves around Draper, whom I’m clearly meant to empathise with. I don’t. I don’t like him at all. Or his bosses. And don’t get me started on his work colleagues. I have no sense of who his wife or girlfriend or children are so it’s hard to like or dislike them.

The only reason I’m watching is that I’ve heard such great things about it. We just finished the first season. Maybe it gets better in the second. I doubt it and I’m wondering why I’ve spent time watching a show that so carefully recreates a truly appalling milieu and time without the kind of overt critique that would make it tolerable. Also the theme music makes me want to kill myself.

It is possible to create television that engages with the racism and sexism of a place and time without making viewers feel complicit. The Wire does it brilliantly. I haven’t figured out what went wrong with Mad Men but watching it makes me want to take a shower. Not in a good way.

Am I alone in this response to the show? Cause so far I have heard only praise.

One thing I like about it? The women’s clothes. But I don’t have to watch the show to see them.

I myself have thwacked a few writer friends with pep talks in the last few weeks.

Actually, it’s just the one pep talk and it goes like this:

You can only control the book you write.

You can’t control whether you sell it. You can’t control how big the advance is if you sell it. You can’t control how much is spent promoting it. You can’t control how many copies Barnes & Noble takes or whether they take it at all. You can’t control whether punters buy it when it finally appears on the shelves. You can’t control the reviews. You can’t control the award committees.

Spending time and energy angsting about any of that stuff will only do your head in.

All you can do is write the very best book you can.

It will get published or it won’t. It will find its market or it won’t. It will sell or it won’t. It will win awards or it won’t. None of that matters if you’ve written the best book you can.

Books with huge advances and the biggest marketing and publicity budget in the world sink like a stone. Books with nary a sheckle spent on them take off out of nowhere. Books you think are terrible do great; books you worship sell fewer than a thousand copies. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. Do not let it do your head in.

Because if you believe that your worth as a writer is tied up in how well your books do even success won’t help. Do not be gloating that your book is doing better than so and so’s. That you can write full-time while they need a day job. Tables turns. So what if your current book is the hugest hit ever? What happens if the book after that isn’t? What happens if your biggest success is already behind you? Does that mean you’re not a real writer? That you’re a failure?

Elizabeth Gilbert touches on all these issues in her recent wonderful talk on genius and creativity. If you haven’t already, you really must check it out for she argues that you cannot let your sense of self get tied up in how your books do and also that it’s a pernicious myth that a creative person must be insane or damaged or both and that ultimately your art will destroy you.

It dovetails neatly with my thinking of late. Because I’ve been wondering if all the angsting that I and so many other writers do is fueled by a belief in those myths. Do we angst because we think we should? Because that’s what we’ve learned writers do? Deep in our subconscious do we believe that we’re not a real writer if we’re not suffering?

I believed it growing up. When I was young I obsessively read and re-read Katinka Matson’s Short lives: Portraits in Creativity and Self-destruction and the work of all the writers included in that book. I honestly thought that in order to be creative I would have to suffer and be self-destructive.

It bewildered me that any time actual bad things happened I found myself unable to write. I was not inspired by them, I was devastated. I have always written more prolifically and better when I’m happy. Later, much later, I could make sense of the bad things, but never at the time. Conversely I am always much happier when I’m writing a lot. When the writing is going well I’m way happier than any award or review or book sales have ever made me.

I have also discovered no correlation between how emotionally fraught it is for me to write a book and the book’s success. How To Ditch Your Fairy was the easiest and most fun book to write, thus far it’s been my most successful. Despite my struggles on the rewrite of the liar book it’s still been a much easier and more fun book to write than Magic’s Child, which was (other than my PhD thesis) my most unhappy writing experience. Rewriting the liar book’s been hard, but it’s also mostly been pretty enjoyable. Sometimes I’d really like not to be in the narrator’s head, cause, well, she’s a compulsive liar, but the tricky structure has been an excellently brain stretching experience. I’ve learned so much writing the book; I think I’m a better writer because of it. That’s very happy making.

If the liar book does well in the real world that’s great, but even if it doesn’t, I still know it’s the best book I could possibly make it.

I will admit that I have talked about writing the liar book as though I were suffering. Because I kind of thought I should be. Which is nuts.

The myth of the suffering artist is very pervasive.

But Liz Gilbert is right: it’s a stupid myth. We should forget about it. Write because you love it. Write because it’s your job. Write to produce the best books you can and to be happy with them. No matter what happens after they’re out of your control you will know that you made them as good as you knew how.

That’s the part of being a writer that is in our own hands; that’s the part that truly matters.