Reading, Writing and Parking

Another funeral on Tuesday. As in the case of the other ones, we weren’t important mourners and it was rather a courtesy visit. But it’s the fourth in probably as many weeks. By the time we got home, I only had to time to throw a quick meal together and get straight out to the writers’ circle (www.guildfordwriters.co.uk). By courtesy of the weather (it was very cold, with occasional snow or showers of sleet) and other circumstances, we were a small select group. Irene (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/blacks.house/) is still not ready to come out, while her arm continues to give her problems, Jennifer was on the way back from Rome and Anne (http://www.annebrooke.com/) was off to somewhere exotic and warm.

Because of the rush, I didn’t take my partly written story – Life was going nowhere. Instead I took along the first few pages of my novel, Tainted Tree. As I said before, I haven’t yet made the big decision as to whether to continue submitting my completed manuscript of 115,000 words to a mainstream publisher or agent. This is the real world. I’m not a potential Booker winner, although I believe that readers would regard this novel as ‘a good read’. Unfortunately, in this day of the mega authors who can command advances in hundreds of thousands of pounds, it’s not good enough to be on the mid-list. If an author sells 5,000 copies of a book in one year, an agent will make around £500 from it. That’s not worth him/her going to any trouble over that sort of writer, and consequently he won’t accept a book that is not highly individual and destined for the top. But Catch 22 is that the majority of mainstream publishers will not look at the slush pile – the unsolicited mss sent to them by unknown writers. They want only the books that the agents have first vetted. Where does that leave the rest of us hopefuls? Either self-publishing, or back with the small independents, of course, if we want our work read or heard. Which of course, we do.

I hadn’t taken any copies of my work and the others had to listen instead of reading my stuff, which we normally do. That meant that one or two of my fellow writers thought I hadn’t provided enough information in those first few pages, while another person disagreed with that. I had in addition brought along a critique which I’d obtained of the first three chapters. One of its suggestions was that I add in much more description – of my heroine; of her surroundings – the usual stuff, smell, touch, etc. etc. I find this very difficult. I don’t do description – I am more interested in what she’s feeling and saying. And I find that a couple of the critiques from the You Write On (www.youwriteon.com) site, more or less telling me to stop explaining, stop describing the furniture, mahogany or otherwise, and cut to the chase, more or less echo my own feelings about it. This is not a dig at writers who include wonderful descriptions in their work – it just doesn’t suit my style of writing. Well, here I am again, with diverse opinions. Which way am I going to go?

A trip out to see Irene on Wednesday, and an opportunity to mull over these topics and others. I stopped at a garage to buy a plant for the invalid, and found myself incapable of parking in a sensible manner, as happens to me on bad days. I ended up jammed against a kerb near the exit, with the car at an acute angle to the paved edge. On arriving at her house, I had to negotiate bags of plaster, etc. for the new conservatory, and a builder’s board. I abandoned the car diagonally in her drive and then had to move it for her husband, when he went out, and again, for the plasterer, so he could move his materials. He did a lot of arm waving and shouting at me about turning the wheel in the wrong direction. There are certain days when I have no idea which way the wheel should be turning. This was one of them. Needless to say, I was once again in the way, when Irene’s spouse returned. He, by the way, thinks the bird featured in my last entry, could be a moorhen. Any other suggestions?

I awoke today with snow scattered all over the garden and a trip to the dentist in prospect. He took an X-ray of a troublesome tooth and invited me back for a drill and fill in a few weeks’ time. This put me off useful work for the rest of the day, except for a mandatory trip to Sainsbury’s (no bananas left – always an indication of the state of my larder.)

My copy of Anne’s A Dangerous Man arrived earlier in the week, but I’m reading 1984 for the reading circle. I’ll have to decide whether to hop backwards and forwards between them, or finish one and start the other.