Writers Abroad

I read an interesting article this week by author, Maureen Johnson, about cover and gender, she reckons women authors get covers that make it clear that the books are by well…women authors.

“And the simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. Because it’s “girly,” which is somehow inherently different and easier on the palate. A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality and that woman is more likely to get the soft-cell cover with the warm glow..."

It made me consider what we perceive from a book cover and how much information it gives us about the book. And is the information always honest or does it sometimes lead us astray?

As a reader, I actually think it’s impossible not to judge a book by its cover to some extent. I do it all the time—I usually avoid anything in pastel colours as I presume it’s going to be chick-lit which I don’t like. Anything so tasteful that it screams ‘literary’ to me is also usually a turn-off. I love intricate fantasy covers especially if they have dragons, and I’m quite partial to half-naked men with tattoos (but obviously only on book covers). For me, a good cover should intrigue and draw me in, but also tell me what to expect, give some hint of what the book is about and make me want to find out more.

As a writer, I always get a little scared when a new cover arrives in my inbox. What if I hate it? What if I think it gives a totally wrong idea of what the book is about? At Entangled publishing, we do get some say in what goes on the cover. After signing the contract, we get sent an art cover form to fill in for each book, which includes descriptions of the hero and heroine, examples of covers you love in the same genre, any particular objects that have significance, anything you really don’t want on your cover, any suggestions/ideas… So for my latest cover The Descartes Legacy – this is what I suggested:

·Either a couple (but not in a clinch) against a background of London with something exploding

·Or something to do with a strand of DNA against a background of space and a beautiful blond

·Or maybe the couple against a background of DNA

I’ve also self-published a  couple of books and one of the things I enjoyed most about that process was having far more say in the final covers. The cover at the top is my next self-publishing project – can you guess the genre from the cover?

So do you judge books by their covers? Have you ever bought a book just because you loved the cover? If so what was it and did it live up to expectations?

Perhaps a gloomy subject for a lovely spring day but it appears that writers are far more likely to suffer from depression than the rest of the population. This was the conclusion reached by Mslexia magazine after analysing the results of a survey completed by women writers. Thirty per cent of the writers, who completed the survey, had suffered from clinical depression at some time, compared with between eight and 12 per cent of the general population. The experiences of writers such as; Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and J.K. Rowling suggest that the depressive experience is closely connected to that of creativity.

While I’m absolutely not suggesting that I rank amongst these writers, you may have noticed my lowered level of activity on the WA site since January and this has been due to severe clinical depression with which I was diagnosed in March. Since then, with the right treatment (after knocking at many wrong doors) I have been making a good recovery and am slowly returning to my old self. It is my first major depressive illness and I dearly hope it is my last. Before this experience I thought depression was just feeling a bit sad, having no idea how it is to feel one’s life spiral out of control, lose the ability to function and wake up (if one manages to sleep at all) to the torment of each new day.

During this black period I managed to keep up my blog and before I hit my lowest ebb, wrote two pieces of short fiction. Quite a downturn in productivity compared with last year. Sitting down to write a story is a profoundly positive act in my opinion so it amazes me how J.K. Rowling worked through depression while writing the first Harry Potter book. For Rowling, writing was a means of escapism from poverty and suicidal feelings.

It has been suggested that the introversion and strong inner life of creative writers might be the qualities that make them more susceptible to mental health problems. That and many hours spent alone honing their craft. ‘Chic-lit’ pioneer, Marian Keyes, has written very openly about her depression which lasted a year and a half. Usually a prolific writer, she bargained with herself that she would do one hour of writing a day, even if it meant simply sitting in front of a blank screen. Unsurprisingly, the blank screen was far too confrontational and didn’t help lift her mood at all. Keyes’ salvation came in the form of a good therapist and baking cakes. Baking inspired her to write a charity book called, ‘Saved by Cake.’ Of course this solution might not work for everyone and is not without side-effects. Keyes put on a lot of weight during her cake-based cure!

I lost a stone during my illness so perhaps every cloud has a silver lining. That being said, I would gladly gain an extra stone again in exchange for not having gone through this nightmarish experience. The self-belief to write fiction has yet to return but I’m hoping that as I climb the hill to full recovery my inspiration to write will come back as well.

Do you write better in a low or positive mood? Is writing a mood-improver or do you need to feel upbeat before sitting down to write? Do you believe writers are more susceptible to depression or is it just a myth, perpetuating the stereotype of the lonely artist in an ivory tower?

Dialogue – among many other things – has been on my mind recently as I struggle to edit my NaNoWriMo effort.

We’re always told that dialogue moves the plot along and develops character better than narrative. That’s quite true. After all, fiction is about people and, unless you are very good at interior monologue (à la Alan Bennett or Kate Atkinson), dialogue is essential. But what dialogue?

If we think of the exchanges that characterise our daily lives, they really aren’t very interesting to other people:

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How was your day?”

“So-so. Did you take the chicken out of the freezer?”

“Yes, it should be defrosted by now.”

“Could you turn the oven on to 200? I’ll just go and change.”

See what I mean? If that were a novel, you’d have died of boredom by now - unless the unfrozen chicken turned into a vampire or a burglar/spy/terrorist leapt through the French windows and held them at gunpoint.

In my own novel I have been trying to find the right voice in the dialogue. Should you make historical fiction – as mine is – sound a bit archaic? Or is it better to make people speak in present-day diction? So, should you include contractions – “I don’t think you’d better do that” – or shouldn’t you – “I do not think you had better do that”? The former sounds better because that’s what we’re used to. Can you expect modern readers to accept more formal dialogue? Where do you draw the line?

Similarly, how should you present dialogue in fiction that’s set in a country where they speak a different language? I am reading a novel set in France – for various reasons I’d better not say which one – and often find myself questioning the authenticity of the dialogue. Although the novel is written in English, the author clearly wants the protagonists to sound French. In doing so, he just makes the language sound stilted. It’s almost as if the novel had been translated – rather badly – from French into English. The author would have done better to render it into everyday English as it’s spoken in the UK.  

And what about speech tags? I have learned that it’s best to keep them simple – “He/she said” or “He/she asked”. But you see authors using all sorts of bizarre constructions to describe speech: “she averred”; “he ejaculated” (!); “she postulated”. These examples all come from published novels. What was the editor doing? Or did he/she just want to give the reader a good laugh?

I am beginning to realise that the best dialogue requires the least effort on the part of the reader. A good way to test authenticity is to read dialogue out loud. Since I share an office with my husband, this is not always easy. However, if you can’t imagine yourself, or people you know, saying it like that, then there’s probably something wrong. This has been a great step forward in the editing process for my novel.

Listening to how people really do talk is also a good way of making your fictional dialogue more authentic. I am a great one for eavesdropping in shops and restaurants. But, again, you have to elide the ums, ers, you knows, because they just don’t make people want to read on. You have to gild reality with the fairy dust of fiction.  

I typed “writing dialogue” into Google and got 194,000 results. No, I didn’t wade through them all but I found some useful tips here:

www.writersdigest.com/uncategorized/writing-dialogue-the-5-best-ways-to-make-your-characters-conversations-seem-real

What tips do you have for making dialogue sound authentic and believable but interesting?