Quit it

Seriously, I am so sick of reading about how old/ugly/weird looking Sarah Jessica Parker is. Hadley Freeman sums up the discussion much better than I can. Not that I would ever read the mail/Telegraph/Maxim because I have betters things to do than digest badly written misogynistic bile. Frankly I don't think she cares what a bunch of pre-pubescant, balding, overweight fugly Maxim journalists think of her. Because really when you start making cruel comments about other peoples appearances you are opening yourself up to a work of of pain. (Note deliberate irony here)

There are, of course, journalists that would make the argument that as an actress you operate in a public sphere and therefore open yourself up to criticise.

But, no. Because its only if your female that your subject to the gaze and judgement of everything in the public sphere.

Also Sharon Stone - shut up. Rant over

Poetry

I read a book last night that I loved: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin. Its the story of Liz who dies in a hit and run accident when she's fifteen. She goes to Elsewhere, an afterlife, where she learns she will never have grow up. She will never drive, never go to university, get married or have children. Instead her body will get younger and younger until she is reincarnated.

It's a beautiful book, that I will probably rave about later when I have my thoughts in order. There's a passage near the end that had me sobbing. Its a tender mediation on all the experiences Liz will never have good and bad. The words chosen make this section read like a poem and reminded me how much I love poetry.

This wasn't always the case. When I was at school I hated poetry, because I found it difficult to understand. It seemed impossible to me that such a multitude of meanings could be compacted into such a small space. Unlike novels poetry does not necessary have to have a narrative thread running through it. You can play with form, syntax, punctuation, meaning. But slowly I started to fall in love with poetry for all the reasons I had hated it (I'm contrary like that). I also briefly flirtated with writing my own obscenely terrible (but creatively satisfying at the time) poetry.

After reading Elsewhere I knew that I wanted to read some good poems. But most of the poet websites out there are just plain ugly, and even worse hard to use. Among the best are university sites. All I want is aesthetically appealing or at the very least clean looking website, with a brief context of the poets life or type of poem below. But there doesn't seem to be anything like that out there.

However I did rediscover this fantastic E. E Cummings poem, carry your heart with me.

carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Perfect :)

Today I am mostly thinking...

• Woo hoo it's Friday! Oh except its not (: Is there any feeling more horrible then waking up convinced for a few precious seconds its the almost the weekend before reality reasserts itself.
  
• I'm so envious of jetsetting colleagues and friends who are going to Alabama and Turkey. Its been way too long since I've been outside the UK, however I am planning a holiday to the Lake District later this year.
  
• Thank you Microsoft word for you help auto correction of my main antagonists name to Marshmallow. Although it does kinda take away from the whole evil thing to have it associated with puffy sugary goodness (unless your ghostbusters in which case yay!)
• Loathing Lila off Dexter with ever fibre of my being. I've never met another English person who drawls in that weird upper class British way. In a cast of impeccable actors she alone stands out as, well, being a bit mediocre. Although she was almost redeemed by the 'pardon my tits' comment. And Debs bitching "She's obviously a vampire. A gross, English titty vampire." Touche.
  
• Speaking of Dexter I really disliked the idea that Dexter would punch Doakes and obviously frame him. Up until now Dexter has been very smart. Why would he reveal his true colours to Doakes when he knows how fixated and tenacious Doakes is? Even if you buy the whole embrace the darkness path he has been on with Lila, being so reckless goes against the covert way he normally operates. Especially as it was a calculated move as opposed to a emotional act. It was an obvious move to further the plot, and completely went against his character. Rant over.
  
• You can't italicise full stops. I don't know why this delights me but it really does :)
  
• I really need to update the music on my ipod
  

Writing is hard

My brain hurts. Ugh.

Book Review: The Black Tattoo by Sam Enthoven

If I had a younger brother I would force this into his slightly sticky hands (I'm thinking 5'2, freckles, scabby knees). The premise is simple (and it must be admitted not particularly origin). However the direction that Enthoven goes literally to Hell and back, and the sheer enjoyment he obviously takes in telling his story lift this book beyond the cliche demon possession + martial arts/Matrix stylings. In the acknowledgments Enthoven quotes Lee Child who said something along the lines of 'write the book you would want to read.' And he has certainly done that here from gladiatorial contests in hell, vomiting bat demons who are good, and Great White Shark Lord of Hell.

So taken from the back cover copy:

Jack doesn't know what he's got himself into. One minute he and his best friend Charlie were up in Chinatown having crispy duck with Charlie's dad (and Jack was having to listen to Charlie shouting at his dad for leaving his mum) - then next minute they were in a mysterious room above a theatre, with some of the strangest characters they'd ever encountered. And they were about to take The Test...and something very very weird was about to begin. The Test transforms Charlie - leaving him with the distinctive markings of the Black Tattoo - and with a temper that seems out of control. The boys' meeting with Esme, a young girl with the most impressive martial arts skills this side of Bruce Lee, her huge and hairy father Raymond, and the mysterious Nick seem to have swept Charlie and Jack into a world they had no idea existed. And it's only going to get stranger...This epic tale of good and evil, demons and hell, vomiting bats and huge battles marks the debut of an incredible new talent for children's books.

For the first hundred or so pages, although the book was very well written, I knew exactly where the story and the characters were going. Magical destiny, demon possession, tragics death spurring a quest for revenge, invasive controlling tattoos, EVIL demon who wants to end all of existence. Apart from a few nice touches (tobacco being able to store magic, the scene in which Charlie makes the butterflies come alive in powerly puffs. This is perfect for demonstrating Charlie's arrogance and how desperate he is to please. One of these great scenes where you can see where each of the characters are coming from.) I was a little bored. And then the characters go through a portal to hell, and the story really kicks in.

In creating hell, and its associated demons is where Enthoven's skills really come to play. I must admit when the characters went through the Fracture (a gateway to hell) my heart sank. But he more than pulls it off from the narcissistic ruler of hell and his officious administrator, to the gladiatorial contests, the God(frey) bumbling and distracted, and the fractious demons not good at doing what their told. Imaginative, gross, inventive, and very clever he squeezes every drop of humour out of his setting. I loved every minute of it. Of course when the action returns to earth some of the frenetic pace lessens but in the home stretch the characters return to Hell and the pace picks up.

The characters are well drawn. Even Esme who at first seems little more than cliche girl with super powers love interests steps outside of what you expect of her. I love the scene in which she says (paraphrasing here) that yes Charlie was an idiot, but the crucial question was whether he deserved to die for being an idiot. One of the nicer and underated things about this book was the way that Charlie and Jack communicate. Despite some of the cool boys own plot points they never stop talking like the fourteen year old boys that they are. You can see why Jack would follow Charlie into hell. And also there's a very nice scene where he rips him a new one for his behavior. Charlie's pain is very real and you see why he would do anything to keep his demon powers, to live in a place where people love him unconditionally and never leave. Jack keeps the book from straying into overblown heroics. I love his 'typicals' and cynicism that things can always get worse.

I really recommend this book, and I can't wait to see what Enthoven does next :)

There are many roads to Oz, but ...

Lately I've been reading a lot of advice about writing: what to do and equally importantly what not to do. Unlike the uniformly excellent advice on agents and the writing business some of the writing advice can be extremely variable. (Diana Peterfreund has an excellent series of posts on when good advice goes bad).

My personal perspective on writing advice can be attributed to the wondrous Jennifer Crusie from who I've taken the title of the this blogpost. There are many roads to Oz, loosely translated to mean that there is no ONE TRUE PATH TO WRITING GENIUS. Of course this flies in the face of what a lot of people want to believe that there is a super sekrit cult of successful writers who in addition to secret handshakes share the knowledge of how to write and guard it jealously mwhahahha. When you're a struggling writer (cf moi) writing in the dark with almost no feedback any hint of a writing bible can seem like a shining beacon in the darkness.

But really as Crusie says we are all individuals and what might work for me probably won't work for you. This is generally why I disavow writing guides (apart from the uniformly expert On Writing by Stephen King) mostly they are written by writers have never heard of telling you that unless you follow the one true way you will never, ever be published. Which is bull.

For example for a long time I got stuck because I had absorbed that you should always have a complete outline before you start writing. For a lot of people, this is the only way they write. For me although I need thinking time, I work out plot quirks by writing. It doesn't mean that the above advice is bad just that it isn't write for me. Different courses for different horses.

But... and here's the crux while 'There are many roads to Oz' there are one or two things that will make the path a little easier. The inspiration for this post was an amazing post called Do it Every Day by Lilith Saintcrow who is preaching that as a writer you should, yanno, write every day. Simple? But a quick scroll down the comments shows that a lot of people seem to vehemently disagree with her.

I agree with her wholeheartedly and here's why. I wrote the first draft of my book in four months. I loved writing it, watching the word count steadily increase. And I disciplined myself to write every day even if it was only for half an hour writing at lunchtime, on the way to work, at home after work, at the weekends. I was so in love with the book at seeing how well it was going that it was easy. Then I finished the book, yay, and I got into the unchartered waters of revision.

At first I hated revising. Unlike writing there was no thrill of the new, no feeling of achievement watching that word counter steadily increase. I found it increasing hard to measure my progress spending all day trying to fix a scene before realising that it would have be scrapped anyway. As a measure most of the scenes in my books have been rewritten four times at least by this point and I still haven't gotten to the line editing stage. So slowly, so slowly I could barely see it my motivation slid. First to go was writing in the evenings. I would work all weekend I told myself. But after four months of semi monkhood during the first draft there was too much fun to be had so that slide by the wayside. Instead of writing every day I was writing ever third day and finding it increasing hard to get back into the story. To see what I needed to do and how to do it. I no longer had a easy handle on my characters, how they would speak, and what they would do. So I would spend an hour or so just rereading what I had already written in order to get back into the book.

A month ago I gave myself a mental slap and got back down to writing every day. And it was hard. But then a week passed and I started enjoying myself I had a handle on my story. Which each bit of text I scraped away I could see the true form of the story.

Lilith Saintcrow is right you have to write everyday. Even if its as little as 10 minutes everyday. Think of other artforms, like music. If you want to musician you play every day,
you do exercises, you rehearse pieces until it becomes second nature. Why should writing be any different?

The trick is doing it when its hard, when your tired, when your braindead, when the sun is shining, when there is anything you would rather be doing than this. But fight through, write everyday and your book will thank you.

Cherchez la femme

I'm about a midway through a book that a number of people have recommended to me. Its a first novel from a celebrated young adult novelist. And its good. The language is crisp, the dialogue funny and realistic, its rife with the little embarrassing details, the first person POV effortlessly conveys the arrogance and uncertainty of a certain type of intellectually advanced (if not psychologically) adolescent male (not that I would know :)). But I keep on stopping, and having to put the book down.

The main problem I have with this book is its central concept. The main character is obsessed with an ephemeral, mercurial, troubled girl who is obviously going to come to a bad end. This is foreshadowed by the title and a stylistic conceit of counting down to an event.

We never know much about this girl, unlike the rest of the characters her behaviour is oblique and inconsistent. Now, I get it. This is because the narrator never really understands the girl she's a cipher for desire, for unrequited love, for femininity. But its been done before; and better.

I have read about a version of this girl in over a hundred different books but I have never met her. Maybe I'm the wrong gender, but I don't think its that. I think its because she only exists in fiction. In a type of literacy fiction written by a late twenties male author looking back on his misbegotten youth and idolising/destroying the memory of that girl he wanted but could never have. I'm not asking for realism in character creation because real life people are more boring, more inconsistent, more fragmented than anything in fiction. However I need some suggestion that characters are more than a cardboard cut out representing the fickle of nature of women.

Because of my awareness of this literary trope when I read this book instead of dissolving myself in a fictional world I am constantly aware that the characters are fictional, the story is contrived, I can see the strings behind the puppets. Like Brecht's epic theatre but for books. Now that can work in some stories (Jasper Fforde) but only when the disconnect is intentional. It is not here.

The second issue is that this type of story has been done better elsewhere. For example in the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides where at least there was the impression that the girls had some kind of interior life. I understand that 'there is nothing new under the sun', that all writing is interrelated to what has come before. For example in horror you can work within genre assumptions (sexually active blondes who are too stupid to live go into dank basement and become killer fodder) or play against them (Buffy (oh how I miss Buffy!) and Scream (which is meta enough to outlines the 'rules' of horror while still working within them)). But you should still add your own interpretation on things and this book takes too much and adds too little.

So I'm torn. A lot of people whose opinions I respect love this book. I hate not finishing books but this book is infuriating me. I can see that the author is a good writer but the lazy misogyny sticks in my craw. Maybe I am missing the point? Or I am just being grouchy because I'm underslept, I have a contact stuck in my eye, and a million Londoners are probably going to vote in an ineffectual fascist just because they like his hair? OK rant over, back to work.