Do it your way as a writer. . . millions of books on Google. . .
remember Cold War thrillers?
WHEN I first began earning a living from a keyboard (it seems so
long ago I ought to say quill and parchment) there were no books about
the craft of writing. One or two on journalism and freelance writing
came from the National Union of Journalists and a few from the United
States.
How times have changed. Not a week goes by without receiving another
in the ever growing library of "how-to" write. How many people, I often
wonder, have taught themselves to speak Russian, understand calculus, play
the piano, or master golf from a self instruction set.
Are slimming magazines any better? If you have half a grapefruit and a
slice of Ryvita for breakfast, a bowl of cabbage soup for lunch and a
shredded lettuce leaf for dinner you can look like Liz Hurley.
Fortunately I do not want to look like Liz Hurley so I’ll stick to
porridge, a prawn sandwich and steak and kidney pud.
There is no doubt that a good instruction book can short circuit your
improvement as a writer. But really you teach yourself. You write
something every day. You make a conscious effort to improve and you read the
best in the field you have chosen to enter.
You need stamina, guts and the ability to treat rejection as a
challenge. Take two incredible author success stories we report in this
issue.
One concerns Marisha Pressl who would rival Russian tennis players
Kournokova or Sharapova for looks and has hit the jackpot apparently
effortlessly, and the other is Michael Cox, a 56-year-old former OUP editor
forced into early retirement and who survived two operations to remove
cancerous brain tumours.
Writers come in all shapes and sizes. From all backgrounds and by a
thousand different routes.
By all means learn from the how-to books and the masters but remember
this: in the end you will do it your way.
* * *
WE HAVE to keep up with IT and Google is putting 15 million titles
on its site at a cost of £100million.
Google hopes, (and Google hopes are usually realised) that it will turn a
profit from adverts on the search page. Soon you will be able to read any
work by Dickens, one of the selected authors.
"It’s a rip-off however you look at it," said Bloomsbury's chief
executive. "The flower of human civilisation is being hijacked to provide
window dressing for a search engine."
Anybody like to bet how soon Bloomsbury, which could be re-named
Rowling's to reflect its new-found prosperity, moves into electronic
publishing?
Good wishes go with Mary
MARY HOGARTH, known to thousands of Writers’ Forum
readers, left us in August to take up a senior lecturing post at Solent
University. Their gain will be our loss.
For more than seven years, since this company acquired the magazine, she
has been a vital member of our team.
Many of the innovations produced in that period came from her never-
ending box of ideas.
She passionately believed in encouraging young writers and third parties.
Shewas totally responsible for this important part of the magazine. That was
just one of many ideas she introduced.
In the every day perils of publishing things go wrong – once we lost
three-quarters of a magazine ready for press through a thunderstorm
destroying a hard drive – but she was always ready to go the extra mile to
put things right.
We wish her every good fortune in the future and thank her for helping to
make Writers’ Forum the magazine that it is. Laura Fennimore
takes over her chair and we wish her well.
* * *
SHOWBIZ and sporting biographies are frequently nothing but tosh
but I’m looking forward to the Helen Mirren story, which is due out in a
year’s time. After a stunning performance as Queen Elizabeth II and a career
which has embraced every role from glamour tart to frosty frump she has
always come across as having depth and intelligence.
Interesting how Meryl Streep, another fine actress, has bemoaned the fact
that women of a certain age are only offered roles as gargoyles.
Not the kind of talk you hear from Judi Dench, who until Mirren’s latest
role seemed to have a monopoly on British queens.
Two repeat television events brought reminders of masters of spy
thrillers. John le Carre’s Tinker Taylor was given another
outing and Len Deighton of the Ipcress File and Funeral in
Berlin was interviewed from his home in southern California.
Is there anybody writing such convincing thrillers today? Or did the end
of the Cold War draw a line under that topic?
