The Story of the I

In the creative hothouse that is UEA there is little time for anything other than feverish communion with the muse (unless you count watching the French Open live scoreboard on the internet all day) but when we return to the physical world we do occasionally get together for a bit of a talk. It was on just such an occasion a couple of days ago, after bemoaning the insularity of the British literary scene, that Vikram (winner of the Radio Netherlands Radio Books short story competition – see here – and fellow PhD student) pointed out that it wasn’t just Britain that was in trouble. In Germany the current big literary news is Charlotte Roche (you will soon be unable to believe you hadn’t heard of her because she’s on her way here) and her ‘literary pornography.’ As an ex-Bataillean, I couldn’t dismiss the idea of ‘literary pornography’ without being a king size hypocrite, but from what I’ve read this is no ‘The Story of the Eye.’ It’s first line is about hemorrhoids, and it takes in masturbation with avocado pits and other middle-brow baiting, taboo stretching material on its path to a no doubt explicit climax. Anyone who remembers Alina Reyes’ ‘The Butcher’ will know that this is not (by any means) the first time European erotic novels have been imported here with commercial intent, but, with sales over 500,000 in Germany and a bidding war in the offing, it looks like the publishers are serious this time.

Regardless of its literary worth, if her novel takes off I might have to dust off my own ‘Red Sex Army’ – a middle-brow baiting story of communist sex terrorists that I wrote during my MA at Goldsmiths. I might even serialise it on this blog if I get more than twenty readers a day… 

A day of two halves. 

In the morning I started another round of revisions on Grace. It occurred to me that I might separate out part of the narrative voice and italicise it and by doing so bring to light some subtle but very interesting aspects of the writing of the main character that might otherwise go unnoticed. So that’s what I did. Seemed to be working very nicely and I cycled home for lunch.

Had lunch, watched some tennis with Emma (my wife) and took Elliot (my son) to nursery.

Came back to the computer intending to continue with the italics. Had a quick read of what I’d done so far. Turned out that what had previously been an interesting subtextual undercurrent was now, writ large, completely taking over the whole thing and didn’t have the depth to sustain it – making the whole book into an overwrought piece of crap. So I changed it all back (or reverted to the copy I made before I started to change it in the first place.)

Must be a moral here somewhere. Whatever it is, if tomorrow I spend more time putting things back the way they were than changing them in the first place I think I might have to call time on the revisions and get back to the Schreber book, where at least I’ve still got actual writing to do.

Two Ravens Press have published an article of mine in their web magazine here. It’s in the illustrious company of short pieces by Alasdair Gray, Alice Thompson and Jonathan Falla which makes me wish I’d spent a bit more time on it (not to say it’s bad, but it could have been better – something of a theme with me at the moment what with all the revising going on.)

While I’m on the subject of Two Ravens I have to say that the more I find out them, the better I like them. As a naive pre-published writer I had imagined certain things about publishers that I was quickly put right about when I actually had some contact with them. I used to think they gave writers enough money to live on, for example, and that they had no interest more central than the quality of a writer’s writing. Neither of those things turn out to be true. While Two Ravens aren’t in a position to hand out cash (can’t really hold that against them given that the big publishers won’t either) they certainly do care about the writing. Perhaps its even because the money isn’t that big a deal that they can care so much about it. Which is very nice for me. And it’s also what’s bringing in a lot of disenchanted writers from major publishers, so that I’m finding myself amongst a roster of established names – something I wasn’t expecting when my agent told me a small new publisher wanted Grace. All very good. They are also writers themselves and once Emma has finished reading Sharon Blackie’s novel I fully intend to get stuck into it myself – providing Vain Art of the Fugue hasn’t completely ruined me for reading altogether.

Just finished another round of revisions to ‘Grace’. You’d think it would be done by now – I’ve given up numbering the drafts there have been so many – but I can still think of things that I’d like to change.

Each edit I make is less and less noticeable – to the point that I’m not sure that even I can tell the difference – but still… there’s something addictive about it. I turned ‘track changes’ on in Word and it looks like about half the edits from the last draft were changing words back to how they had been in the draft before, but every now and then a very important change occurs to me – usually when I’m in the shower or taking my son to nursery on the bike – and if I can remember it long enough to write it down I’m always glad I did.

I hope these little revelations stop once the book goes to print, because I don’t know what I’ll do when its all down in black and white…