As any aspiring writer will be only too aware,
bookshops are awash with handbooks designed to guide them through the
business of writing and publication. I mentally divide these into two main
categories: the descriptive and the prescriptive.
Descriptive guides tend to talk about the philosophy of
writing, the ‘whys’ of doing it, the search for motivation and meaning in
one’s work, about what it’s like to be a writer. They tend to provide
inspiration and spiritual refreshment rather than precise details about
how to lay out a manuscript for submission. For anyone who’s in for the
long haul, or who likes the idea of being a writer as much as they like
doing the work (and not everyone does write for publication), such books
can be sustaining or comforting reading. On the whole, I don’t think
descriptive books do much harm; admittedly, they’re not always that much
help if you’re desperate to get published now, quick, but they’re not
written for that kind of person.
Prescriptive guides are an altogether different matter.
I tend to gauge just how prescriptive they are by how I feel at the end of
reading them. If I feel I’ve been stapled to the wall by a barrage of
‘must’s and ‘should’s, I don’t look as favourably on the text as I would
if I feel a range of options has been laid out for me to sample.
Severely prescriptive books tend to offer a ‘one size
fits all’ formula for success, but closer examination of that formula
often reveals it to be utterly hollow. I recall reading one book, by
someone who was apparently a well-known writing adviser in the US; she had
a foolproof method which I was naturally keen to discover. No one had ever
failed, using her method, and that was because it consisted of this
piece of advice: keep submitting your book until someone buys it.
Which is not such bad advice on one level, for persistence is vital in
trying to get published, but on another, it absolved her of any
responsibility for failure, while enabling her to take all the credit for
success. It was rather like those ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes one sees
advertised; having sent away for the advice (and paid handsomely to
receive it) one discovers it consists of placing advertisements like the
one you’ve just answered, and taking money off the suckers who come
behind, rather as you’ve just been suckered.
More gently prescriptive books usually offer sensible
advice about generating a plot and a story, creating characters, producing
good prose, laying out a manuscript and so on, taking the neophyte through
the processes involved in writing and trying to get published. The worst
ones seem to regard writing as an entirely by-numbers process or else akin
messing around with a literary Meccano kit – just bolt X, Y and Z
together, and bingo! Personally, I find them soulless to a greater or
lesser extent, but I also appreciate that such guides have their place in
the scheme of things, particularly for the inexperienced writer. I’m
always on the lookout for guides which cover the necessary issues in a
fair and balanced way, not dwelling too long on relatively unimportant
matters (believe me, laying out a manuscript is surprisingly simple
and does not require an entire chapter dwelling on the niceties of which
font to use or the precise measurement of the margins) or giving short
shrift to things that are really, really important, and more importantly,
remembering that the author’s inspiration is a part of the equation.
But some books are not what they initially seem to be.
Take The Truth about Writing. At first, I thought it was just
another prescriptive guide. There were telltale signs – the cover flash
‘reveals the secret of success’, the fact that the subtitle contains the
word ‘handbook’. I quite liked the promise of the title too; ‘truth’ is
such an emotive, evocative kind of word. This book would rip the lid off
the writing business and tell it how it is. In all honesty, I’m sure
that’s what Michael Allen thinks he’s doing. The problem is that his view
of the writing business is extremely idiosyncratic. Yes, it’s based on his
own experiences (which are varied and include a stint as an academic
publisher), but it’s difficult to get past the fact that Allen really
doesn’t like the publishing industry much, and seizes every opportunity to
criticise it. This is, I can’t help thinking, not so much biting the
hand that feeds one, as chewing it off at the wrist (though he now
self-publishes, in order to avoid further contact with the business he so
despises). He would, I think, describe himself as clear-eyed and pragmatic
– and indeed, he claims that his book is intended to foster clear thinking
in aspiring writers, which is commendable – but I was left with the sense
of someone who has somehow found himself out of step with the modern
world, who has lost contact with the heart of the business. This latter
was particularly noticeable in Allen’s publishing anecdotes, which are
often rather dated, and in his reliance on facts and figures drawn from
cuttings and The Bookseller. Figures for, say, 1996, are
practically prehistory so far as publishing nowadays is concerned, things
move so fast. I never remotely felt I was getting the hot insider
information the cover seemed to imply.
So what will this book give you? It gave me a
startling tour of Michael Allen’s prejudices, which take in, among
other things, a dislike of modern educational practices, and of academic
literary criticism (as if that has any relevance to getting published, and
I speak as someone who writes academic criticism myself), not to mention a
conviction that using the female pronoun throughout the book somehow
absolves him of accusations of sexism (it doesn’t – I’m fascinated by the
way that publishers, i.e., the baddies, are all female, while agents
invariably seem to be male, unless they’re bad agents, in which case … ah,
you’re ahead of me). I also learned about Michael Allen’s particular
theories about writing, which seem to revolve around having a good
breakfast and accepting that it is not a writer’s business to express his
or herself, but to create emotion in the punter, something which he goes
on about at great length. I don’t think I’d disagree about the need to
achieve a response in the reader, but I think Michael Allen and I would
have to agree to disagree on the nature of the interaction between author
and reader, and the author’s role in it. For that matter, I’d argue about
the reader’s role too, as an active participant rather than as a passive
recipient, but never mind. Occasional crumbs of good sense did emerge,
mostly about how to avoid RSI, and how to parcel out time for writing, but
they were very few and far between.
Unexpectedly, the one thing I felt Michael Allen
could have spoken about with great authority, the art of self-publishing,
was mysteriously glossed over. There was vague talk of selling in the
digital age, and how older people were also capable of using the Internet
too, but I felt we weren’t getting to the heart of whatever was on his
mind at that point.
The formula? Success varies according to Circumstance.
Well, obviously. One might as well return to the snake oil saleswoman at
the beginning, with her advice to ‘keep submitting until someone accepts
it’.
The question is, is this an essential handbook? No, not
unless you’re interested in getting to know the mind of the author in
greater detail, in which case, it’s invaluable and illuminating. But it is
a very interesting illustration of why ‘essential’ can be such a weasel
word. What Michael Allen regards as essential may well be of little
interest to someone who is primarily engaged in getting words down on the
page and who couldn’t care less at this stage about the state of the
publishing industry. Ultimately, I think it was more essential to Allen to
have given his views on the publishing industry and on writing than it is
for aspiring writers to read his book.
