Show #9

Stories form Martin Sorrell, Barbara Butcher and Jennifer Moore.

Recommended Reading
Two bits of recommended reading on the show.
There is an abundance, perhaps an overabundance of material devoted to the art & craft of writing, including a fair few magazines. I have shelves full of books on how to write, but I only subscribe to one magazine, which, surprisingly, is one supposedly published specifically ‘for women who write’. The magazine is Mslexia and I have always found it a useful resource. Not just for the articles and exercises, some of which are very good, others not so very good, but definitely very good is the extensive directory and listings section at the back, which has up to date details of hundreds of magazines accepting submissions, closing dates and submission guidelines for competitions, info on courses and events. And not many writers have yet found a way to be published without submitting anything, at least, not while they still live. So, Mslexia, highly recommended. It comes out quarterly and is priced £6.95.

And remember, if there’s anything out there you’d like to recommend for our listeners, just send in an email and I’ll publicise it.

Paris Review
As I mentioned above, I have hundreds of books on writing and how to write. Why? Because there it is, on the bookshop shelf, promising it holds the secret to my writing desires, assuring me it will turn me into a bestselling author for just ten minutes a day.
Well, no, perhaps even I’m not gullible enough to be taken in by that. But I think I do use these books as a sort of displacement activity, as if by reading them I can skip past a few of the thousands of hours of actual writing that I need to do to get there.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against these books, not really. I believe creative writing can be taught, as long as there is some desire and talent there in the first place. I wouldn’t have spent so much time either teaching or being taught myself, otherwise. The growing number of universities offering Creative Writing MAs and such like would seem to back up the idea. And if a subject can be taught, we need textbooks.
A few, and only a few, of the books I own on creative writing truly are excellent, inspiring works. Some others are very good, and well worth reading. The vast majority, however, are dull and repetitive with little new to say, while many others are so bad they do more harm than good, stifling any natural ability with clichéd exhortations and overly prescriptive writing rules, demanding a formulaic approach to the craft, suggesting that writing success is simply a matter of solving a puzzle.
And, what is more, and this should be a dead giveaway, these writing books at the lower end of the scale are always written by people I have never heard of, and certainly never read. Which, rather circuitously, brings me on to my next recommendation.
I believe you can’t be a decent writer without being a decent reader and the best books from which to learn to write are the novels and stories that inspire us in the first place. And if I want to hear writing advice, I prefer to hear it from writers I respect. Which is why I love the Paris Review Interview books.
The Paris Review started life as a small literary journal set up by a bunch of expatriate Americans in Paris in 1953, including George Plimpton, who edited it until his death in 2003. As well as growing into a major literary journal, publishing many great authors, it also became famous for its long running series of interviews with writers, often conducted by other writers. The results are usually meticulous and fair and tend neither to eulogise or criticise, but simply give the author the chance to reflect on the writing life: his or her habits, routines, processes and concerns, and as such they provide a true insight into what goes into producing a final manuscript, and show how different every author is. (although noone so far has revealed they got their first break after reading "How to be a Bestselling Author for Ten Minutes a Day".)

The best of these interviews have been compiled in various publications: the old Writers at Work series and, most recently, a polished set from Canongate, published from 2007 onwards. Featuring interviews with authors as varied as Hemingway, Oates, Faulkener and Stephen King. Can’t recommend them highly enough – truly inspiring, and you can probably pick them up pretty cheaply second-hand now, particularly the Writers at Work editions, while some of the interviews are available for free from the Paris Review website.
Here’s a taste, one of my favourites, part of an interview with EL Doctorow in 1983.

The interviewer mentions that Doctorow had once told him that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook.

To which Doctorow replies

What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children had missed a day of school. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.” She gave me a pad and a pencil; even as a child she was very thoughtful. So I wrote down the date and I started, Dear Mrs. So-and-so, my daughter Caroline . . . and then I thought, No, that’s not right, obviously it’s my daughter Caroline. I tore that sheet off, and started again. Yesterday, my child . . . No, that wasn’t right either. Too much like a deposition. This went on until I heard a horn blowing outside. The child was in a state of panic. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off.

I had been trying to write the perfect absence note. It was a very illuminating experience. Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.