Bleurgh-y.

My husband is not much of a reader, one book a year is about his limit, plus a couple of wrestling magazines and graphic novels and a gazillion reprts on dementia and elders. He is smart as anything, a fabulous musician, an expert in his field, just not into reading for fun. Anyway, he looked at a couple of bits I have written recently and said 'There's a definite theme to everything you write," which instantly had me intrigued. I'd love to know what my recurrent theme is.
He said "It's like here's a gorgeous juicy apple, oh, but wait, it's full of maggots!"


Oh.

On being sucked in by those enticing cover blurbs...

This keeps on happening to me, and usually the culprit (not the right word but it'll do) is Dave Eggers. I adore Eggers, absolutely adore him. I will read anything he writes. Yup, even the self indulgent too long rambles, even the too short (not very good sometimes) flash fiction, all of it. And I will find value in it.
I think he is amazing too in his generosity to other writers, through McSweeney's and in interviews and so on. But why oh why does he insist on putting quotes on the front of sooooo many books? Then I see the blurb and think, oh, Dave Eggers recommends this, it must be good, and I buy it and invariably hate it. Why do I think that tho'? I have bought several editions of McSweeney's, and aesthetically scrumptious as they are, the content often leaves me cold.

It's not just him to blame, I recently bought a paperback for £11.99 (extraordinarily expensive) because the cover blurb was by Ali Smith, so I saw it as an endorsement of extreme quality. When I began to read however, I thought, well, it's okay I suppose, but not great, and definitely not worth that much money.

Lesson to self; do not be swayed by those you admire, for their tastes are not yours.

(Just off to read my latest purchase, not only is it recommended by Eggers, but he name checks my hugest writer crush Lorrie Moore, it had better be amazing!)

Having a blast.

I have been very busy, but pleasingly so. Hurrah.

The online writer's group I have joined is rather inspiring. We had a "Blastette" last Friday, which was a day of writing to prompts. I said I'd do 10, which proved much harder than I had anticipated, despite being allowed to make the pieces as long or short as one wished.

What fun tho'. I have never written flash fiction before this group, but writing instantly to prompts is astonishing in how it magically seems to cause characters and voices to bubble up from ones mind. I created a pervy poet, a grief stricken widow, a frustrated housewife, an evil boy, a scared teenager (also male), a romantic old lady...

I don't think that these are characters I would necessarily choose to write, but one or two of them I may try to expand on. Brilliant fun reading other peoples work too, knowing they were creating at the same time, reading the same prompts and writing them alongside me.

Summer holidays are looming and I want to keep on writing as much as possible so as not to lose momentum. It's difficult when the boys are home, but due to the wonder of Playstation I may be able to squeeze some bits in here and there!

Well that's a blooming shame then.

Susan Hill has said that there will be no further Long Barn Books First Novel competitions. This follows on from an announcement that she made saying that the deadline for this years comp was to be extended in order to try to find 5 - 6 of sufficient quality for the short-list. Apparently, disgruntled writers complained that having entered the competition they felt this statement was derogatory and unfair. Scott Pack is one of the judges and highlighted the issue on his blog, (well he has a big mouth y'know, ha ha.) This was A BAD THING apparently, and some people bitched and moaned, and now, well there is no competition for them/us to enter next year.

Although I didn't submit to this I do know how crushing it is to not be picked, to not win, to not have the world beat down ones door in awe at ones talent, but, it comes with the territory does it not? Trying to get published is not a great process, but Susan Hill doesn't seem to be the right person to be getting pissed at. What about all the faceless, blogless, nameless people who writers submit precious work to and never hear anything from? Or all the other competitions whose selection process remains a mystery to us, we just eventually learn we weren't successful when googling for the umpteenth time with that faint glimmer of hope still flickering inside. Seems unfair to me.