Finding North

What happens when you feel like you’re on the wrong track?

Image: thinkingmomsrevolution.com

In the course of researching the market, checking out agents’ requirements, keeping on top of trends in the publishing industry and all those other vital things that anyone who desires a career in writing needs to do, I come across a lot of scary information. I read articles which decry the upswing in children’s stories featuring magic – ‘Harry Potter is so over, people!’ – and some which say there aren’t enough stories like that. I’ve sweated my way through blog posts complaining about exactly the sort of books I love to read – and, by extension, write – and industry diatribes against children’s books which feature some, or all, of the things I’m currently working on. I have had a children’s book in mind for years, one I just haven’t found quite the right voice for yet, which – apparently – is so old hat as to be laughable. Agents and publishers all seem to be searching for something which is new, which is fresh, which is different, but if what I think of as new and fresh and different is boring as dust to them, then what am I to do?

I haven’t written a new short story for quite some time, besides one which I entered into a competition a few weeks ago. I feel like I’ve lost touch, somewhat, with what the market is looking for in terms of short fiction – either I’m churning out cliché, or I’m just not fashionable any more in terms of the subjects and/or style I choose to use, or something else, something I can’t put my finger on, is wrong with my work. I went through a golden patch of success with my stories when I was completely new to writing them – they seemed to fit the moment, and the readers to whom I was sending them understood what I was getting at, and could get on board with what I wanted to achieve – but in recent months, they’ve fallen on cold, stony soil. I wouldn’t even worry about this – taste is a subjective and amorphous thing, everyone is looking for something different in a short story, there’s room for all sorts of creative work, and all that – except for the fact that when I read short stories now, particularly award-winning ones, I just don’t get them.

In the immortal words of Jordan Catalano – they ‘just don’t hold my attention.’

Image: notsuperhuman.com

I’m not for one split second trying to say that the short stories I’m reading aren’t good – clearly, they are, or they wouldn’t be winning awards – but what I mean is this: how have I become so out of touch with what’s required of a story that I can’t even read, and enjoy, an obviously well-crafted piece of work?

Of course, I believe it’s important to be true to your own voice and honest about what you feel when you’re writing a story. It’s pointless to write ‘to’ a market, because it changes so regularly. Having said that, it worries me that I don’t seem to be able to keep abreast of changes, and that the ideas I’m having are old, out of fashion, out of favour – unsellable, unlovable, dead in the water before they’ve even set sail.

Writing is a hard thing. Not only is it difficult, and time-consuming, and brain-consuming, to sit down and spend hours tapping away at a keyboard but it’s also hard on the soul to create something special and unique to you, something you love and want to share with the world, which then falls at the first hurdle. Writing fiction can be intensely personal; what you write says a lot about who you are. So, if what you write is out of touch, out of favour, unfashionable – or, if you believe it to be so – it can be a deep wound in a secret place, one which you carry with you but show to nobody. A person can’t help but be interested in what they love, and a writer will write what interests them, and what excites and motivates their creative brain. Creating a piece of work is an achievement in itself, of course, but realistically, spending months or years writing something which you love, which then goes on to sit on your desk gathering dust or which ping-pongs around from agent to agent for years without finding a home, is disheartening.

I don’t have an answer for all this. You can’t write to a market because by the time you’ve finished your book the market has changed, as markets are wont, and your carefully crafted story about canine vampires from outer space has been done to almost literal death. You can’t write to a market because that’s not being true to yourself as a writer, and it’s also a little cynical. Instead you write because you love it, and you love the stories you’re telling, and you write them as well as you can, and you try to improve your craft with every project you complete. All you can do is hope that, someday, the market and your talent and your idea and your submission will all align like planets in an intergalactic conjunction, and the magic will start to happen.

Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

Image: ibnlive.in.com

All a person can do is keep the focus on their own personal North. Write what’s true, and what’s real, and – while remaining aware of trends – don’t let yourself be swayed by what other people expect. Write what you love, as well as you possibly can. And – maybe – take some time out and do some reading, or remove your head from your writing space altogether in order to let some new ideas come sweeping in. It’s worth a shot.

The Sun Always Shines on TV

I’ve written a lot of blog posts at this stage – over 200, incredibly – and I’ve neglected to discuss, until today, something rather important – television. It’s one of the most significant cultural influences in the world, I think – certainly, it is for me. The shows you watch, and those you spent your youth watching, can have a hand in shaping the way you think about stories, about life, other people, about everything. Of course, my small-screen favourites didn’t influence me as much as the books I loved, but I’ve wittered on about books quite enough around here, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.* So, I thought perhaps I’d talk about some of my favourite TV shows, old and new.

But first – I have to throw this in here:

*sigh* Morten Harket, how I used to love thee…
Image: beatsandrhymesfc.com

I am, of course, a child of the eighties. I wasn’t born during that decade, but most of my memories are from that time. So, my favourite shows from my early days include such gems as Grizzly Adams, The Littlest Hobo, The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven, Knight Rider, Alf, Harry and the Hendersons, The Cosby Show, Magnum P.I., Jake and the Fat Man, The Wonder Years, The A-Team, and of course McGyver. I don’t think these shows really had anything in common besides they were all American, with rockin’ theme tunes; some of them also featured cheesily happy families, which was something I appreciated in a TV show. I loved ‘Grizzly Adams’ so much that it, quite possibly, gave me the passion I still have today for men who wear beards – though I’m not as keen on keeping bears as pets, these days – and I wanted to go and live with the Ingalls family so badly as a little girl. Actually, watching the TV adaptation of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ led me to read the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, probably the first and only time in my life that I watched a story before I read it. It also gave me an inexplicable love of flat, open expanses of farmland and endless blue skies, and I still have an unsatisfied urge to vist Kansas and walk through a cornfield, all because of that TV show.

A good TV show, a good story, does just what these shows did for me – they get into your head, shape how you see the world, and remain with you through your life. Having said that, I haven’t watched these shows for over twenty years, so I’m not sure how they’ve held up, but I’m glad, in many ways, that my memories of them are unsullied by adulthood. They remain unspoilt, golden and perfect in my mind. I think what they mean to me now, besides nostalgia and warmth, is excitement and adventure and newness – they opened my mind to everything the world could hold when I watched them as a child, as well as showing me that a story could be sustained from week to week, leaving me breathless with anticipation, and looking forward to the next episode almost before the current one had finished.

In the nineties, despite the plethora of brilliant TV shows to be had, one show stood head and shoulders above all the others for me. I regret still that it only lasted for one season. It was My So-Called Life, a programme that told the stories of kids who were (at least on the small screen) the same age as I was at the time, and it was accurate and true to my life and experience despite the fact that it was, again, set in America. And, I’m sure I’ve felt anticipation since ‘My So-Called Life’ was on TV; I’m sure I’ve had things I looked forward to so much that I found it hard to wait for them to roll around. However, the levels of impatience I used to go through as I waited for Friday night to come again so that I could watch the exploits of Angela, Rayanne and their friends were in a league of their own. You were nobody in my school if you didn’t come in on Monday morning full of gossip about what had happened in MSCL and if you weren’t completely up to speed with the very latest on who was dating whom, how dreamy Jordan Catalano was, and whether he would ever make an honest woman of Angela.

I remember like it was yesterday how betrayed and heartbroken I felt when I learned the series had been cancelled, and when I had a chance to buy the DVD boxset of the show a few years ago, I jumped at it. I’ve watched the episodes again over the last few years, and they’re still as good, and as gripping, as they were when I was young. I think the thing ‘My So-Called Life’ has in spades is authenticity – as much as a TV show can be said to be authentic – and a sense of believability which makes it hard for me to admit that Angela’s parents weren’t really Angela’s parents, and that she didn’t really live in a beautiful house in an American suburb beside Brian Krakow, the class nerd who loved her; the show absorbed me, totally. It had everything a good YA story needed – a nerdy boy, a cool but awkward girl who totally, always stuck to her principles (that’s what I loved most about Angela), a messed-up best friend, a closeted gay character, an unbelievably handsome love interest, music references, pop-culture references – the whole gamut. It’s brilliant, and shaped me more than I can say. It let me know that it was cool to be yourself and not to do what everyone else in your life was doing (ironically enough, since watching this show was the most conformist thing I could’ve done, at the time); it let me know that there were all sorts of different people in the world, and all of them deserved to be treated fairly and with respect. It let me know that just because someone looked good on the outside, that didn’t mean they were okay inside, and that what really mattered, at the end of the day, was friendship and loyalty and love.

The kids from My So-Called Life
Image: en.wikipedia.org

I’m almost over the fact that the show was cancelled after season one. Almost.

I think there’s some great TV these days, too, even though I’m not sure I love today’s shows as dearly as ones I watched in years gone by. I follow several series (again, I’m showing my age; the youngsters these days are all about YouTube and other things I don’t really understand, which I think is a shame), and there are modern shows, like ‘The Wire’, which are masterpieces of storytelling and fire my imagination like only the very best stories can. There is, to be fair, a lot of dross on the television, too, but occasionally a gem will emerge, a visual story which will last through the years. A good show is a good show for life.

Care to share your favourite TV memories?

 

*Not really. One can never witter on too much about books, right?