Start all over again...
Jun. 23rd, 2008 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sheenaghpughI've been reading a fascinating article in the latest number of "The Author" by Peter Ayrton of Serpent's Tail, about the increasing difficulty of selling fiction to big publishers, and the way most of them won't stick with mid-list authors who may be getting critical acclaim and selling reasonably but aren't making them megabucks. "It is for this reason," he says, "that agents advise midlist authors to change their name and submit books in a new persona - they stand more chance of being published as a new writer than as a writer with previous books with mediocre sales".
Hmmm. Now to choose a pseudonym, and maybe that will suggest the corresponding persona..... My first notion was to use the forename and surname of a random two of my favourite fictional characters. Unfortunately this yielded, in quick succession, Ahab Corvinus, Ostap Midwinter and Seth Jenkyns. Actually he's a poss, isn't he? I see him as a working-class Northern writer with attitude, looking maybe a bit like the late Jake Thackray.
One reason Ayrton cites for the difficulty of selling fiction is the pernicious cult of faction, and of fiction-as-autobiography - as Ayrton says, rightly I think, this "closes down the imagination's space - readers more and more demand of fiction that it be 'real', whatever that may mean. [...] today's readers are in danger of losing the ability to read fiction, to allow themselves to be transported to an imaginary world created by the novelist". He cites the hostile comments on Amazon about his house's big publishing success, Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin - now I don't much like what I have seen of Shriver's Guardian columns, and her book using snooker as a background was wrong enough to be plain funny. But the Amazon objections to "Kevin" are apparently on the ground that a non-parent cannot write about being a parent - in which case Shakespeare must have spent a hell of a lot of his spare time killing kings. This goes back to the advice traditionally given to new writers: write about what you know. Of course there are good reasons for it, as I think each time I see another student story about gangsters in New York from someone who has clearly never set foot in the place. But I don't give that advice any more; I have replaced it with "write about what you can persuade people you know". Partly because if some students wrote only about what they know, they'd have nothing to write about except getting wasted in the union bar, partly because it is a part of being a writer to be able to convince your readers of things that aren't so. Shriver failed to do it about snooker, because she didn't do the research well enough; that doesn't mean it can't be done. Wilkie Collins' No Name is partly set in a town he knew well and partly in one he mugged up from a guide book, and I defy the casual reader to tell which is which.
To quote the late Bob Monkhouse: "The most important thing in this game is sincerity, and once you can fake that, you're made".
Now to work out Seth Jenkyns's biography....
Hmmm. Now to choose a pseudonym, and maybe that will suggest the corresponding persona..... My first notion was to use the forename and surname of a random two of my favourite fictional characters. Unfortunately this yielded, in quick succession, Ahab Corvinus, Ostap Midwinter and Seth Jenkyns. Actually he's a poss, isn't he? I see him as a working-class Northern writer with attitude, looking maybe a bit like the late Jake Thackray.
One reason Ayrton cites for the difficulty of selling fiction is the pernicious cult of faction, and of fiction-as-autobiography - as Ayrton says, rightly I think, this "closes down the imagination's space - readers more and more demand of fiction that it be 'real', whatever that may mean. [...] today's readers are in danger of losing the ability to read fiction, to allow themselves to be transported to an imaginary world created by the novelist". He cites the hostile comments on Amazon about his house's big publishing success, Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin - now I don't much like what I have seen of Shriver's Guardian columns, and her book using snooker as a background was wrong enough to be plain funny. But the Amazon objections to "Kevin" are apparently on the ground that a non-parent cannot write about being a parent - in which case Shakespeare must have spent a hell of a lot of his spare time killing kings. This goes back to the advice traditionally given to new writers: write about what you know. Of course there are good reasons for it, as I think each time I see another student story about gangsters in New York from someone who has clearly never set foot in the place. But I don't give that advice any more; I have replaced it with "write about what you can persuade people you know". Partly because if some students wrote only about what they know, they'd have nothing to write about except getting wasted in the union bar, partly because it is a part of being a writer to be able to convince your readers of things that aren't so. Shriver failed to do it about snooker, because she didn't do the research well enough; that doesn't mean it can't be done. Wilkie Collins' No Name is partly set in a town he knew well and partly in one he mugged up from a guide book, and I defy the casual reader to tell which is which.
To quote the late Bob Monkhouse: "The most important thing in this game is sincerity, and once you can fake that, you're made".
Now to work out Seth Jenkyns's biography....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*grin* I couldn't resist...
Date: 2008-06-23 05:20 pm (UTC)Jenkyns's earliest works are now lost to us, because the city ran a graffiti clean-up ten years ago. 'Cockroach Cabs' and 'The Insurance Agent Massacre' are, however, word of mouth legends, and distorted fragments may still be heard recited over late-night suppers in dimly-lit clubs.
Jenkyns lives in a small village, in a cottage surrounded by the remnants of a Victorian herb garden, heavily populated with hedgehogs. He has one cat who helps him write by hiding bills until they are past due, thus providing motivation. He rides a bright red recumbent bicycle and has been know to stop traffic in order to rescue turtles wandering into danger.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-23 05:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-23 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-10 02:43 pm (UTC)However, the vast bulk of commentary I found was not about the themes of the work, but rather about who each of the characters is supposed to be, a kind of literalism which I think misses much of what Anthony Powell is trying to talk about. I don't get the impression reading it that he was trying to write a sort of puzzle in which the goal was to work out the underlying biographies of the characters. It's not faction, to use that term, but seems often to be read as if somehow it should be.
Thinking further, there's two slightly different points embedded in your post it strikes me. The reapplication under a pseudonym seems to reflect publishing as a business in which the quest is for the star player, the headline act, and so an industry in which those who don't become the literary equivalent of a Glasto headliner are quickly dropped from the label.
The other point is on faction, and I wonder if the massive success of misery literature is an issue here, with publishers seeking fictional equivalents (assuming misery lit isn't largely fiction to begin with) of that recently successful new genre. I suspect you might know the answer to that better than I would though.