This blog is having a gentle snooze at the moment, while I devote all my energies to the editorial day job and to writing. Occasionally I remember the existence of my boyfriend, too.
I'm half-way through my Orchard contract next week though, so I wonder what the future holds.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
An editor's take on issue novels and #yasaves
It seems Wall Street Journal columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon has joined Martin Amis in the children’s book world stupid corner with an article about how current YA lit is too dark, and will turn your teenage daughter into a bloodthirsty anorexic who uses naughty words to grandma.
The internet is currently exploding with some fantastic heartfelt repudiations of her position, often tagged #yasaves. I have similar feelings, for similar reasons, to many of the people posting. YA didn’t save me as a teenager, but only because I was born just a little too early. Other books did the job.
Feelings aside, I also have a professional position here, which is: wtf duh?
Gurdon appears to believe that YA is one big undifferentiated field, but it most certainly is not. The publishing category occupied by a lot of the books she pans is ‘issue novels’, i.e. realistic contemporary depictions of traumas such as bullying or rape. And from the WSJ article you’d think that authors were pouring an unmitigated and accelerating stream of nastiness direct into the ears of the vulnerable young. If publishers are involved, then it’s probably just to think ‘kerching!’ and email the author asking for another overdose scene.
Hardly. In the UK at any rate, issue novels are a hard sell. They are regarded by publishers as liable to be either undigestedly autobiographical, or preachy and pat, both of which are a killer for teen readers who (unlike a lot of journalists) can smell crap. Slushpiles, in as far as publishers see slushpiles any more, bear this out. There is a lot of material out there that is either exploitative, or reads like therapy.
Some of it gets into print too, but not via any department I’ve worked in. Everyone has come across tales of ‘triumphant survivors’ which focus on someone’s terrible childhood and adolescence and purport to be inspiring but actually leave a nasty taste in the mouth… and these are published into the nastier end of the ‘misery memoir’ genre, not into YA. They’re by adults, for adults.
Books for teens have to clear a much higher bar. For one thing, they have to have the ring of emotional truth. Interestingly, there is one point at which I sort-of agree with the WSJ article, which is when Gurdon quotes from a novel about self-harm: ‘She had gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breathe.’ I’ve never read the novel in question so absolutely don’t mean to judge the rest of it, but in isolation at least I find that line lacking. Why? Not because it’s graphic, but because it’s physically very graphic without being emotionally graphic as well, so it falls a bit dead and gets an ick factor without accompanying understanding.
What this tells me is not that issue novels are bad, but something I already know, namely is that they are hard to do, on a personal level as well as on the level of trying to get them past the acquisitions meeting. Authors defending their work can’t really push this angle, but an editor can. Writing about traumas, particularly ones you have survived yourself, can be cathartic but it can also be painful and dangerous, and entails responsibility.
For example, to take another point at which the WSJ article just about brushes reality, some eating-disordered girls really will use any tale on the subject, no matter how cautionary, as ‘thinspiration’. These days anyone writing a novel about anorexia does so in the knowledge that this is the case. But it comes back to the familiar censorship dilemma of whether one should say nothing just because a few people will twist your words. May talented authors never take that path. ‘Wintergirls’ is one of my favourite YA novels and today there are a thousand tweets and posts out there showing just how much the risk of mistaken emulation is outweighed by the benefits of honesty.
All that from me, and I’ve never edited an issue novel. Currently I do series for pre-teens, innocent stories which develop reading skills. I really hope that when the readers of the books I’m currently working on reach adolescence, there will still be a steady stream of honest, intelligent books that keep them reading, and keep them sane.
The internet is currently exploding with some fantastic heartfelt repudiations of her position, often tagged #yasaves. I have similar feelings, for similar reasons, to many of the people posting. YA didn’t save me as a teenager, but only because I was born just a little too early. Other books did the job.
Feelings aside, I also have a professional position here, which is: wtf duh?
Gurdon appears to believe that YA is one big undifferentiated field, but it most certainly is not. The publishing category occupied by a lot of the books she pans is ‘issue novels’, i.e. realistic contemporary depictions of traumas such as bullying or rape. And from the WSJ article you’d think that authors were pouring an unmitigated and accelerating stream of nastiness direct into the ears of the vulnerable young. If publishers are involved, then it’s probably just to think ‘kerching!’ and email the author asking for another overdose scene.
Hardly. In the UK at any rate, issue novels are a hard sell. They are regarded by publishers as liable to be either undigestedly autobiographical, or preachy and pat, both of which are a killer for teen readers who (unlike a lot of journalists) can smell crap. Slushpiles, in as far as publishers see slushpiles any more, bear this out. There is a lot of material out there that is either exploitative, or reads like therapy.
Some of it gets into print too, but not via any department I’ve worked in. Everyone has come across tales of ‘triumphant survivors’ which focus on someone’s terrible childhood and adolescence and purport to be inspiring but actually leave a nasty taste in the mouth… and these are published into the nastier end of the ‘misery memoir’ genre, not into YA. They’re by adults, for adults.
Books for teens have to clear a much higher bar. For one thing, they have to have the ring of emotional truth. Interestingly, there is one point at which I sort-of agree with the WSJ article, which is when Gurdon quotes from a novel about self-harm: ‘She had gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breathe.’ I’ve never read the novel in question so absolutely don’t mean to judge the rest of it, but in isolation at least I find that line lacking. Why? Not because it’s graphic, but because it’s physically very graphic without being emotionally graphic as well, so it falls a bit dead and gets an ick factor without accompanying understanding.
What this tells me is not that issue novels are bad, but something I already know, namely is that they are hard to do, on a personal level as well as on the level of trying to get them past the acquisitions meeting. Authors defending their work can’t really push this angle, but an editor can. Writing about traumas, particularly ones you have survived yourself, can be cathartic but it can also be painful and dangerous, and entails responsibility.
For example, to take another point at which the WSJ article just about brushes reality, some eating-disordered girls really will use any tale on the subject, no matter how cautionary, as ‘thinspiration’. These days anyone writing a novel about anorexia does so in the knowledge that this is the case. But it comes back to the familiar censorship dilemma of whether one should say nothing just because a few people will twist your words. May talented authors never take that path. ‘Wintergirls’ is one of my favourite YA novels and today there are a thousand tweets and posts out there showing just how much the risk of mistaken emulation is outweighed by the benefits of honesty.
All that from me, and I’ve never edited an issue novel. Currently I do series for pre-teens, innocent stories which develop reading skills. I really hope that when the readers of the books I’m currently working on reach adolescence, there will still be a steady stream of honest, intelligent books that keep them reading, and keep them sane.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Letters from child readers
If you’re lucky enough to have a wide readership among young children, or if you’re a publisher fielding such authors’ post, you will be the recipient of a lot of letters.
The ideal is to read and treasure them all, but unfortunately this is seldom feasible. Quite often a publisher will have a form response that is mailed back to all those earnestly printed outpourings.
The publisher I am currently working for gets hundreds of letters, and I see some of them. After a while, you start to notice an interesting split in their contents.
Category A (90-95%): Form questions – ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’, ‘Will you write back to me?’, ‘Will you come to my house?’, often accompanied by very generic drawings. Quite a lot of these come in batches from primary classes who have been told to write to an author.
Category B (5-10%): Real letters from people who just happen to be five/seven/eleven years old, often accompanied by things they have made – cards, stories (or even full books), games, thoughtful drawings etc.
If you sit and sift through a large pile of post, the difference between the two types can be surprisingly marked. It’s like looking into a nest and seeing nine gaping gullets… then you realise the chick at the back is quietly plucking straws out of the nest and weaving them into a parachute while regarding you thoughtfully with one beady eye. It really makes you want to help that chick fly away to somewhere better, even while you know that she’s just going to have to wait for her feathers to grow in.
Sometimes a child's original mind and forming personality shines through the creases and crayoning of a fan letter.
So when possible, in those special cases, you eke out a bit of time for a personal response, not knowing if you’re inspiring a future genius or getting the kid into trouble with their mum, who doesn’t know they’ve been nicking stamps.
Or both!
The ideal is to read and treasure them all, but unfortunately this is seldom feasible. Quite often a publisher will have a form response that is mailed back to all those earnestly printed outpourings.
The publisher I am currently working for gets hundreds of letters, and I see some of them. After a while, you start to notice an interesting split in their contents.
Category A (90-95%): Form questions – ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’, ‘Will you write back to me?’, ‘Will you come to my house?’, often accompanied by very generic drawings. Quite a lot of these come in batches from primary classes who have been told to write to an author.
Category B (5-10%): Real letters from people who just happen to be five/seven/eleven years old, often accompanied by things they have made – cards, stories (or even full books), games, thoughtful drawings etc.
If you sit and sift through a large pile of post, the difference between the two types can be surprisingly marked. It’s like looking into a nest and seeing nine gaping gullets… then you realise the chick at the back is quietly plucking straws out of the nest and weaving them into a parachute while regarding you thoughtfully with one beady eye. It really makes you want to help that chick fly away to somewhere better, even while you know that she’s just going to have to wait for her feathers to grow in.
Sometimes a child's original mind and forming personality shines through the creases and crayoning of a fan letter.
So when possible, in those special cases, you eke out a bit of time for a personal response, not knowing if you’re inspiring a future genius or getting the kid into trouble with their mum, who doesn’t know they’ve been nicking stamps.
Or both!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Plot outlines
I am fighting with a plot outline, again. I definitely feel it should be Perfect. It should Contain Everything. It should, essentially, be the book in microcosm so I don’t have to do all that tedious wrestling with bits that turn out not to work when you get half-way through them, because I have a precise guide to keep me on track. This will save time!
My editorial self wants to know in advance that this wheeze is gonna work out.
Unfortunately I’ve never stuck to a self-made plot outline in my life. Writing for packagers or adapting TV material to fit a book format are rather different affairs. As is dishing out plot outlines to other people.
Material originating in my own head goes its own way and generally ends up only tenuously related to the original seed. I have always accepted this previously. It’s not like I have no clue about how books are structured or am unwilling to rewrite as much as necessary.
But now I am applying the hard eye of logic. If one cannot get the plot outline perfect the book is doomed! Because it certainly won’t work in 70,000 words if it doesn’t in 700!! I think.
Is starting a book that isn’t perfected in outline folly because you are ignoring the problems, or is writing the book itself a means of allowing the problems to sort themselves out? The answer as usual is, depends on the book, but how to know…
My editorial self wants to know in advance that this wheeze is gonna work out.
Unfortunately I’ve never stuck to a self-made plot outline in my life. Writing for packagers or adapting TV material to fit a book format are rather different affairs. As is dishing out plot outlines to other people.
Material originating in my own head goes its own way and generally ends up only tenuously related to the original seed. I have always accepted this previously. It’s not like I have no clue about how books are structured or am unwilling to rewrite as much as necessary.
But now I am applying the hard eye of logic. If one cannot get the plot outline perfect the book is doomed! Because it certainly won’t work in 70,000 words if it doesn’t in 700!! I think.
Is starting a book that isn’t perfected in outline folly because you are ignoring the problems, or is writing the book itself a means of allowing the problems to sort themselves out? The answer as usual is, depends on the book, but how to know…
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Big Things and Game Changers
After much debate, there does now appear to be a critical mass of industry opinion that Dystopia is the next big thing. You can tell that it’s achieved a genuine level of consensus, because some people are starting to declare that the trend is over – that’s usually a good sign that said trend is established.
Why do publishers need a next big thing? The most common theory online appears to be that it’s laziness – we want somebody else to do our thinking for us. The reality is a little more complicated though.
Often your Next Big Thing does derive in large part from a single book, e.g. Twilight leading to Paranormal Romance and Hunger Games leading to Dystopia. So let’s say that later this year someone publishes a breakout novel that generates the fantastic new genre of Meercat Crime. A year later, it’s established as the next big thing. Here’s the thought process for publishers:
1) If we haven’t got any Meerkat Crime on our list, we look out of touch;
2) We can only publish what gets submitted. Agents are focusing on Meerkat Crime so about 25% of what we’re looking at is in that genre. Statistically that means a quarter of the good stuff we get is Meerkat Crime;
3) Bricks and mortar retailers have created a ‘Meerkat Crime’ bay in their shops. Without books in that genre, that’s part of the shop we can’t sell into. We decided to go for Elephant Romance on our list, not Meerkat Crime, but there’s no Elephant Romance section in the shop and no comparable books to put in a three-for-two promotion, so our sales are low;
4) These days, so many books are sold online. No picking up and flicking through the pages; people glance at the cover and one tagline; if they don’t see something they understand, they move on. Everyone knows what Meerkat Crime is, so if we publish into that category we’re not going to lose sales because our product isn’t strongly branded enough.
With all these factors to take into consideration, failing to get any Next Big Thing books on the list is bad news for a publisher of any size.
The good news for people who don’t want to write what’s currently trendy is that while there are strong commercial reasons for jumping on the bandwagon, that will always be second best to driving the bandwagon. Publishers don’t really want to cash in on Twilight, or Hunger Games, or Wimpy Kid, or Mr Gum, they want to find a book that does what they did. A book that invents a market niche will almost without fail sell far, far more copies than the books which subsequently fill it.
So while at the moment a good dystopian submission may stand a slightly better chance of publication than a good teen romance submission, the book that stands the best chance, and attracts the most editorial enthusiasm and marketing spend, will always be the outstanding one, the one that is original and exciting enough to be the next game changer. That’s what publishers want most, because although the strategy is high risk, and most of these novels will not succeed in becoming break-outs, when they do the rewards for success are stellar for everyone involved.
Publishing is changing incredibly fast, and nobody really knows what direction it’s going in, but we have yet to do away with the need for really good books.
Why do publishers need a next big thing? The most common theory online appears to be that it’s laziness – we want somebody else to do our thinking for us. The reality is a little more complicated though.
Often your Next Big Thing does derive in large part from a single book, e.g. Twilight leading to Paranormal Romance and Hunger Games leading to Dystopia. So let’s say that later this year someone publishes a breakout novel that generates the fantastic new genre of Meercat Crime. A year later, it’s established as the next big thing. Here’s the thought process for publishers:
1) If we haven’t got any Meerkat Crime on our list, we look out of touch;
2) We can only publish what gets submitted. Agents are focusing on Meerkat Crime so about 25% of what we’re looking at is in that genre. Statistically that means a quarter of the good stuff we get is Meerkat Crime;
3) Bricks and mortar retailers have created a ‘Meerkat Crime’ bay in their shops. Without books in that genre, that’s part of the shop we can’t sell into. We decided to go for Elephant Romance on our list, not Meerkat Crime, but there’s no Elephant Romance section in the shop and no comparable books to put in a three-for-two promotion, so our sales are low;
4) These days, so many books are sold online. No picking up and flicking through the pages; people glance at the cover and one tagline; if they don’t see something they understand, they move on. Everyone knows what Meerkat Crime is, so if we publish into that category we’re not going to lose sales because our product isn’t strongly branded enough.
With all these factors to take into consideration, failing to get any Next Big Thing books on the list is bad news for a publisher of any size.
The good news for people who don’t want to write what’s currently trendy is that while there are strong commercial reasons for jumping on the bandwagon, that will always be second best to driving the bandwagon. Publishers don’t really want to cash in on Twilight, or Hunger Games, or Wimpy Kid, or Mr Gum, they want to find a book that does what they did. A book that invents a market niche will almost without fail sell far, far more copies than the books which subsequently fill it.
So while at the moment a good dystopian submission may stand a slightly better chance of publication than a good teen romance submission, the book that stands the best chance, and attracts the most editorial enthusiasm and marketing spend, will always be the outstanding one, the one that is original and exciting enough to be the next game changer. That’s what publishers want most, because although the strategy is high risk, and most of these novels will not succeed in becoming break-outs, when they do the rewards for success are stellar for everyone involved.
Publishing is changing incredibly fast, and nobody really knows what direction it’s going in, but we have yet to do away with the need for really good books.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Connected again
Hello, blog world. I have an internet connection! This is pretty exciting news when you have had to wait SIX WEEKS for it. Insert swearing about BT here…
Then take a deep breath and move on. Boyfriend and I are ensconced in our new flat, it is decorated and tidy, and we are connected to the outside world. That is what matters.
I have also been at Orchard working on Rainbow Magic for 10 weeks now, but my colleagues have assured me I am not yet turning into a fairy. If the process did take place, it would have to be quite a lengthy one, as the difference between me and a fairy is quite marked. Diversity is strength, anyway.
My intention is to keep this blog running in a low-key way while I’m at Orchard. Being on staff at an imprint of the nation's biggest publisher makes me privy to various interesting things… plenty of which I can’t share. But perhaps some will turn up that I can.
Then take a deep breath and move on. Boyfriend and I are ensconced in our new flat, it is decorated and tidy, and we are connected to the outside world. That is what matters.
I have also been at Orchard working on Rainbow Magic for 10 weeks now, but my colleagues have assured me I am not yet turning into a fairy. If the process did take place, it would have to be quite a lengthy one, as the difference between me and a fairy is quite marked. Diversity is strength, anyway.
My intention is to keep this blog running in a low-key way while I’m at Orchard. Being on staff at an imprint of the nation's biggest publisher makes me privy to various interesting things… plenty of which I can’t share. But perhaps some will turn up that I can.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Moving life
This blog has been sadly neglected of late, which is no great surprise given that I am currently moving life. I started as Managing Editor at Orchard a week ago, and providing the exchange of contracts goes through (insert swearing here) I will be moving house in two weeks’ time. So life at the moment consists of trying to get the important things done and get enough rest in between.
I hope to come back here properly after the house move, though it will take a few weeks as we are going to be doing a fair bit of decorating and it’s not clear how long it will take to get the internet connection set up.
There is, of course, the question of what sort of blogger I can be, as obviously I now have a company affiliation within publishing and am not going to post anything that could compromise this. But I will continue to have a brain.
As for Orchard itself, I’m up to my eyes, and it’s great! The disadvantage of freelancing is that you often get given, at first, two simple things to do; then when a client realises you’re competent you get another half-dozen simple things to do. Juggling multiple commitments is a challenge in itself, but you can also end up longing for just one or two really challenging projects to focus on get your teeth into. I certainly have one of those in Rainbow Magic!
I hope to come back here properly after the house move, though it will take a few weeks as we are going to be doing a fair bit of decorating and it’s not clear how long it will take to get the internet connection set up.
There is, of course, the question of what sort of blogger I can be, as obviously I now have a company affiliation within publishing and am not going to post anything that could compromise this. But I will continue to have a brain.
As for Orchard itself, I’m up to my eyes, and it’s great! The disadvantage of freelancing is that you often get given, at first, two simple things to do; then when a client realises you’re competent you get another half-dozen simple things to do. Juggling multiple commitments is a challenge in itself, but you can also end up longing for just one or two really challenging projects to focus on get your teeth into. I certainly have one of those in Rainbow Magic!
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