In Which I Have Some Quiet Time...

Hey all, apologies for the quiet on here as late, but I am tres busy doing many things and have rediscovered a somewhat forgotten pleasure: reading for myself, and myself alone. It won't last too long I don't think - I'll very soon have something I am desperate to say - but for now I'm enjoying the experience of it being just me, myself and my page.

In the last few weeks I have read Lewis Hyde's The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, which was quite beautiful and profound, and made me realise some truths like I'm not at all unusual for the type of person I am, and that I'll never be rich unless my writing takes off as I'll always put a lid on my professional activity to leave room for my creative endeavours. A really great book if you're into that kind of thing. I also read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a devastating work of schmaltz, and disappointing similar to Everything is Illuminated, which I think is the superior novel. 

Last week there was a glorious re-read of Girl With a Pearl Earring, a quiet classic ever-present in my mind, and also a delve through The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, which made me both sad and excited for the future, but seemed to willfully ignore the fact that not all women in the workplace are Google execs who can demand that their company pay for a business class flight for their nanny so they can commit fully to family and the workplace at the same time, and the some such. 

There was also too much focus on one socio-economic and racial group, not enough consideration of welfare, single parenthood or the fact that not everyone has all the components of family and economic life lined up like ducks waiting to be utilised, like idle grandmothers and houses near head offices so they can be the CEO, if just their husband would help them with the washing up. It was well-written though, clipped along at an entertaining pace and I did recognise several people in my life within it.

Anyway, should you miss me until my next post there's always my column to read, as well as my short story Poinsettias, which appears in Danse Macabre #66 (if you click through, turn your sound up.)

x 





'Frenchman's Creek' by Daphne du Maurier

I read Daphne du Maurier's 'Frenchman's Creek' ages ago, kinda forgot about it, and then thought of it the other day and was like 'wow, that was such an enjoyable book!'

So, this is not a review; rather, it is the dregs of my memory of a holiday read that taught me a few important life lessons, which are as follows:

•  Every girls needs, at the low points in her life, a French philosopher-pirate. 

•  If you're going to be stuck in Cornwall with several small children, without husband or company, don't waste the little free time you have tidying up after everyone and watching rubbish reality TV. Instead, use your imagination to write a story where you are a wild, spirited and beautiful aristocratic rebel who flies in the face of convention and runs off to sea to have androgynous adventures with the afore-mentioned French philosopher-pirate. Anything else would be a waste.

•  Daphne du Maurier is an insurmountable goddess and we would all do well to emulate her.

ends







Blogaversary Series: Day Three

So, my blogaversary series continues apace, and today I have two more links for you from the archive:

1. The first is my review of Wilkie Collins' 'The Woman in White', entitled, quite dramatically, 'I am a Literary Sensationalist!' , from October last year.

Reason: I think 'The Woman in White' was the first book that I read purely because it had been so highly recommended in the book blogs I read. Before I started blogging about books a lot myself, my reading choices were based on things that caught my eye in the library or store, things by authors I already knew, and the classics that you hear so much about and feel you should get on and read. This book fell into none of those camps, as, to be honest, it was never a book I'd really heard of and there is no reason nowadays to place it at the front of the library or store. It was pure book blogger love that did it, and it was pure love that I felt for this book. Also, my review got a bit feminist-political at the end, which is always nice. A complete win all round. 

2. Link two today is a post called 'This is Why Writing is Awesome', which describes a realisation I had at a career mentoring day for teenagers, where I was the writing representative.

Reason: Well, obviously I knew before the day I wrote this post that writing is awesome, but it was so nice to see that reinforced back to me on the faces of kids that I really wanted to write about it. A lot of Twitter discussion followed this post and it was nice to see that other writers felt the same way. And it's good to do something for the kids, of course *air grab* and nice to feel that you can be a role model of sorts.

Check back tomorrow for another look and a sneaky giveaway...







Blogs You Must Read

A few weeks ago, the lovely Ali at 12 Books, 12 Months nominated me for a 'Versatile Blogger' award, passing on the baton that she'd received from two blogs a while back. And I'm thrilled! I love this big-up-the-community aspect of blogging - thanks Ali!

The rules of receiving it are that you then have to pass it on to 15 other blogs that you read and love, and then reveal 7 fascinating facts about yourself. The blogs first:

1. 12 Books, 12 Months, and not just because she nominated me - having actually managed to get through the writing of 12 books in 12 months, Ali also features interesting industry Q&As, guest posts (including mine!) and articles about her own writing work, which are great.
2. Martini and a Pen, run by the lovely and talented Tom Andrews, who posts his own mad-cap fiction in the run-up to the publication of his first novel, which I am beside myself with excitement about. He was also one of the first ever commentors on my blog, way back when.
3. Tiny Library, which is a more recent addition to my reading routine, features fab reviews and community features, like the Vikram Seth readathon that I am excited to be participating in over the next few months.
4. Literary Musings is another great book blog, and a recent discovery of mine. Brenna reviews a great and interesting variety of books, and I love that these often have an American Lit focus, as I know little about US lit and enjoy learning more.
5. The Lost Beat is a fabulous poetry blog, run by Tom Andrews (from Martini and a Pen, above) and Natasha Gdansk: reading just a few posts is a great invigorator for getting on with your own stuff as it is So. Damn. Inspiring. A lot of the poetry is tres funny too.
6. Alas, Book Lush has been sleeping for a good few months now whilst the lovely Nicole does other things, but it's still a fave site of mine for the great book reviews and articles, and for learning some things about baseball too (!)
7. A very popular site, Reading Matters, is the perfect email subscription for keeping me up-to-date with newly published fiction - particularly British, Irish and Australian - without me having to actually search it all out for myself :)
8. Changing tack for a second, Bear and Bug is a great craft blog run by Anna who I used to work with that posts interesting and beautiful things. She also custom-made me a cuddly toy monster for my godson which he LOVES, so it's a win all round.
9. Back to book blogs again, A Room of One's Own, run by Jillian, was the original home on 'The Classics Club' (see my list above). She writes really, really well about how books have shaped her life so far, helping her deal with some rather big issues along the way.
10. Kirsty Logan's site and work are totally inspiring (and intimidating): she is so talented that it turns me rather green :)
11. Chasing Bawa, which recently turned three (congratulations!), is a great blog which features fiction from across the world, written by Sakura, who sure as hell knows her stuff. We've also done one or two work things together in real life, so I know also that she's a lovely person to boot.
12. Another fab blogger/lovely person is Simon at Stuck in a Book, who rarely writes about books I've actually read - his tastes centre around middle-brow pre-WWII fiction, I think - so it's great for colouring in my black spots and pointing me to things I really should read.
13. I know they won't notice that I've nominated them, but I adore The Hairpin and feel weirdly like every contributor to it could be my friend. Some great, great writing.
14. Same for McSweeney's, if you're not familiar with it...
15. And I'd like to leave this fifteenth space free for all the great blogs I'll find in the next few days, weeks, months...one thing I love about the book blogging community is that new people are arriving all the time.

 So, to the seven things about me:

1. Like Ali, my accent also changes at will, so much so that I sometimes have to watch it. I think it comes from years of language learning and generally moving around.
2. Ali was sad to discover that her first gig wasn't The Deftones; I'm proud to reveal that mine was to see 3T (remember them? Jacko's nephews) at Plymouth Pavilions, supported by Shola Ama. My friend and I went with our mums. Good times.
3. As you all know, I have a cat called Tolstoy. If I were to get a dog, I'd get a red King Charles Spaniel and call it Joan, in tribute.
4. The only times I really realise how small I am (155cm) are in the mirrors at Pilates next to all the taller people, and when I have to stand on tip-toes to order at bars. Otherwise it never occurs to me. Naturally, I get ID'd ALL THE TIME.
5. When I studied in Japan, I did a several-month-long stint of hair modelling for a local salon. Photos of yourself in crazy Japanese wigs in regional, Japanese-language hair magazines = best souvenirs ever.
6. I'm a pretty good cook. My favourite things to make are Greek salad, Scandinavian beetroot and ginger soup and pasta of all types. Tomorrow night I'm making a three course Thai feast for some friends.
7. And my final thing...having worked in the arts/theatre for a few years now, I've met a good number of famous literary, thespy and general celebrity-esque people. The majority are disappointing in some way, so it's with pleasure that I reveal that the nicest celeb I've met is Deborah Moggach, who has written many things, including the 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', which was recently made into a film. She was so nice and friendly that she wanted to talk at length about my writing - where I was with things, how I find it, what my writing is about etc. - and waved away any suggestion of talking about her own. 

 

So, who would you nominate? And what secrets would you tell?







Emotional Reactions in Reviews

My Friend Amy wrote a great piece the other day about the validity of emotional reactions to art, and the appropriateness of including this in reviews, which perhaps should be based on more objective factors, such as the quality of the writing and the originality of the piece. Here's an short excerpt to give you an idea, but click through for the whole piece:

'A couple of weeks ago, one of the TV journalists I follow on Twitter mentioned how they find it strange that people equate their emotional reaction to a film with the film's objective quality. I wish I had screen capped the tweet as I cannot remember who said it, but it forced me to start thinking about how we determine the worth of art.

I would say the reason we have professional critics is so that we have people who are supposed to evaluate a film, book, TV show, album, etc. based on what are considered to be the more objective qualities of a piece of work, to evaluate if they accomplish what they set forth to do, and if they take new risks. To do this, though, a professional critic must deny their emotional reaction to a piece of work and I wonder if that's entirely possible. The way we take in and perceive art will always be colored by our own understandings and limitations so while I do think professional critics strive to do this in a way the casual consumer of art does not, it is still just that...very limited.'

This got me thinking about the way I include my own emotional reactions in reviews, and whether this is the right thing to be doing in order to give the book or film a fair deal. Like anyone else, I have things I know are derivative nonsense that move me (some silly, weepy films  immediately spring to mind) and things that I know are 'great' or 'ground-breaking' but leave me entirely cold. When speaking about them on this platform, because I've always thought people want to hear what I think, I will gush about the ones that move me, and I will be cool about the ones that leave me cool, whilst adding caveats for objective factors like quality of writing and originality etc.







Is it Misogynistic if It's of Its Time?

You know, I'm a fairly modern girl, and, using fairly large strokes, take the equal stance of women in the Western world entirely for granted. I think most girls my age (I'm 26) would say the same: we believed without pause that we were entitled to education, to respect and to our own voices. The last one I especially accept without question, and set up my own platform (this one) without pause. So far, so fine.

Then, the other day, I caught myself singing and dancing along to this quite loudly whilst getting dressed one morning, and realised that I was quite happily singing along with surely one of the most misogynistic songs ever performed:







This is Why Writing is Awesome.

Today I got roped into an off-stage skills learning days for 14-15 year olds in the theatre that is a fundraising client. Basically, 60 teenagers split into little groups and travelled around the theatre and had 2 minutes with a representative of many of the 'off-stage' skills it takes to run an arts organisation. I was the resident writer, as you'd probably guess.

After meeting all of us off-stage staff, we reassembled on the stage and they talked about what they learnt.

Writing was the only skill amongst all those on offer that did not necessary require university, could be learnt in your own time and off your own back, and all activity associated with training for it, save the price of pencils, was free.

They seemed to get that, and to like it. And I was so proud to tell them what I do. This is why writing is awesome.

I just thought I'd share.


. 





An Open Letter to All Writers of Books

Dear writers,

Hello, how are you? I hope your days are productive, your verbs are appropriate and your advances are suitably high. I do not wish to fall out, as I love and respoect what you do. Really. It's just I have a small bone to pick with you.

Your chapters are too long. Yes, I said it. A pertinent issue it might not be, in these times of no money or hope, but your chapters are rambling and often irregular, making it difficult to tell whether I am better off starting another one or finishing where I am, without flicking forward to find the next break and inadvertantly seeing the precise word on the page that gives everything away. It's a type of K-Complex I think, like hearing your name in far off conversations. I can't help but see 'yes', she sighed', 'she surrendered' or 'she died'. It leaps at me when I'm looking for the chapter break, so I don't like to go looking.







How Not to Approach a Blogger...

This is actually a DM conversation I had with someone the other day on Twitter. I won't reveal their identity to spare blushes:

Nameless Literary Organisation: 'Hi Lindsey - would you like to test run/write up my literary consultancy for free? [Link] Matt.

 

[20 minute pause]

NLO: 'If it endears you to me, I once worked at Constable and published a flash fiction called Lindsay Shits. Googlit.'

Me: 'Ha, why on earth would that endear me to you?! Tell me why I would want to test run/write up you consultancy - what is it for etc?'

[30 minute pause]

NLO: 'It makes people better poets and fictioners: [link]'

Me, having looked: 'I've not really got anything to submit at the moment, but will keep it in mind. I wouldn't write about it without trying it...'

Cont.: '...first. Btw, when you approach other bloggers, don't use the word 'shits'. Not nice.'

[On-going pause]

How many things are wrong with this picture?

Spelling my name wrong (my Twitter name is my name. The spelling is in it!), presuming he might need to 'endear' himself to me to get my attention (Creepy. Also, he 'once' worked at Constable? Makes me wonder why he doesn't anymore) and then linking my (misspelt) name with 'shits'. Umm, seriously? And then no thanks or goodbye. 

Manners, you say?! Is there anything in this that might make him expect a 'yes'? (And suggesting I might want to become a better 'fictioner'...back-handed insult anyone?)

So, in summary, no. No. 

No.

Does anyone else get approaches like this?







Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want

Ok, here’s a fun  and divisive activity: go up to a group of friends (or strangers) and tell them you’re excited to go see the Tracey Emin retrospective exhibition that’s currently on at the Hayward Gallery in London. I reckon, out of a group of ten, five or six will go ‘no, she’s a fraud/awful person/exhibitionist opportunist’, one or two might go ‘who?’ and carry on drinking and the final two, three or four might express something between vague, sheepish interest and an interest equal to yours (or, more accurately, mine.)

(If you're not sure who she is, maybe click the highlighted words and watch the videos below. I'm not actually sure how well know she is outside the UK.)

I went to see said exhibit earlier this month and I thought it was excellent. There, I said it. EXCELLENT. Moving and raw and immensely affecting. I think her work is vulnerable and touching and immensely powerful in its honesty. Also, I think her work on fertility, childhood and abortion (namely, her childhood, fertility and abortions) has gone some way to lifting the veil of secrecy and shame that tends to hang over such things, and I don’t understand how people target her for her controversy when she’s just expressing what has been a difficult and controversial life. Art is self-expression, after all, so what else would she express? Most of it is actually about a longing for love: familial, nostalgic, sexual, platonic. 

What I did find slightly creepy was the number of mothers with children and babies in prams watching the video installation How It Feels; if you’ve seen that you’ll probably be able to imagine how unsettling that might be. But then, I guess that’s the whole point of it. By expressing her own experience of it, she unites others who’ve experienced it but can’t, or don’t want to, say. Tellingly, there were people of all sorts there, and lots of them too.

Anyway, that’s probably enough from me, except to say GO AND SEE IT if you can, if only to put meat on the bones of the arguments against.

This is the gallery’s overview of the exhibit:

Her thoughts on the retrospective:

And a clip of a Sky Arts interview, ‘In Confidence’, in which Laurie Taylor exhibited, to me, a complete ignorance on the processes and meaning of art (that part isn’t really in this short excerpt though):

 http://video.sky.com/skyarts/related/remap/video-tracey-emin-in-confidence/

The Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want exhibit is at the Hayward Gallery until the 29th August 2011.

For more information on Tracey Emin, see her page on Artsy.







The Holstee Manifesto

     Just to reiterate:

By Holstee







Calling All Book Bloggers!

     I was recently reading The Bookseller magazine (as I am now a bookseller myself) and I came across a great article by Scott Pack that stated that newspapers were missing a trick by not inviting book bloggers to place the odd review in print, blogging now being the more dynamic medium.

     Read the article in full here.

     What I'm wondering, dear book bloggers, is how you feel about this:







Over-Egging the Pudding

     As some of you may have noticed from my general absence and my slow comment replies in the first half of June, I have recently been away from my desk and en vacance around the south-western region of France. It was tres jolie et reposant, travelling from Bordeaux to Biarritz, Beziers to Bergerac (I didn’t plan those alliteratively) in weather conditions often not dissimilar to the UK (i.e. cloudy with a bit of rain) but occasionally glorious. Anyway, if you look at that route on a map, you’ll see it goes straight past Lourdes.







Literary Locations - will your work always be better in you live in Paris?

       Many aspiring writers, myself included, have fallen for the idea that to write anything interesting or of worth, you must be living on the edge in one of the world’s great capitals, sleeping by day and slave to the bright lights and pen by night. One must really live, one must really feel, one must drink and smoke by the Seine with one hand on an earth-shattering idea and one foot in a pit of destitution. How could one write in a daylight hours after a good night’s sleep and a morning of adaptive suburban socialising? I must be Hemingway: leaving my wife whilst fighting the Fascists and spending my last dime on the whisky that is ruining my life.







Why Do People Go To Literary Festivals, Exactly?

     With Hay Festival and Charleston Festival both happening in the UK this week and my Twitter timeline being flooded with mentions, photos and quotes from both, it started me thinking, why do people go to literary festivals? At a music festival, you go to hear the music played live, at a food festival you go to eat; but a literary festival? It's not like you go to hear the books read aloud. So why do people go, exactly?







7 People I'd Like To Be [Friends With] When I Grow Up

Everyone needs role models. Here are mine:







A Royal Wedding Tribute

My friend's Mum provided all this
beautiful china... I didn't make all this :)

    So, the royal wedding day is upon us. I am beyond excited as I love a good wedding and there's going to be some awesome tea party action in my neighbours front room as we all swoon over the pomp and circumstance and Kate's sure-to-be-beautiful dress. Rare is the occasion when I find myself in a tea dress and hat in my local Co-op at 9am on a bank holiday, desperately clutching whipping cream and lemon barley squash, as I was this morning :) It's a lovely occasion I think; poo poo to the nay-sayers who need to lighten up a bit and have a bit of cake.







Does Writing Have to be Political to Matter?

 As you may recall, I recently had my flash fiction piece 'Snow' nominated in the 3 Quarks Daily Art & Literature prize 2011 and that I ranked as high as a semi-finalist before not making it through to the final six. The finalists who did get through (found here) became these eventual winners:

1. Top Quark: Namit Arora, Joothan: A Dalit's Life
2. Strange Quark: Edan Lepucki, Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction
3. Charm Quark: Elliot Colla, The Poetry of Revolt 







Floating Over Tokyo

     Now, I had planned and written this post about a Japanese photo blogger prior to the events of last Friday, but I think, publishing it as I am today, that it's only appropriate that I place it within its current context. 

     Like everyone, I am truly humbled and horrified by the earthquake, subsequent tsunami, nuclear reactor uncertainty and the height of the likely death toll.  Combining that with the resultant economic worries and the psychological and emotional impact of losing one's loved-ones, posessions and homes, it's clear that those in Japan will need to stay in our thoughts and our prayers for some time to come.







Sweet Team Tolstoy

     You know sometimes you read about or find out about an idea that’s so simple and inspired that you wish to God that you’d thought of it first? I had that last week. Dove Grey Reader are running what is surely the simplest and most compelling of schemes for Tolstoy fans and other book aficionados: a group reading of the infamously long and difficult War and Peace, with monthly updates and discussion of the previous 100 pages. Such a great idea, and probably the ideal impetus to get through to the very last page of that legendarily long tome.