The Word Cloud

If you're struggling to come up with a snappy one-line description of your novel - the hook, the elevator pitch, whatever you want to call it - then this list from the Bookseller of what books were expected to be hot at Frankfurt is interesting. Obviously some are more relevant and informative than others, but it gives you an interesting flavour of how the book trade talks to itself, when it's in the business of this kind of hooky summarising:

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/hot-books-line-frankfurt-2011.html

Hello folks, I got this letter from C&W today. Please read and advise.

Dear Mary,

I really enjoyed your novel, finding it a very subtle, moving account of the breakdown of a relationship that is dogged by months and years of separation. The wife's story is particularly poignant, thoughtful and full of sensibility. Well done.

I have shown it to two agents, both female, as I felt it was more of a female read. Both expressed interest, but ultimately felt it would struggle commercially and for that reason are not prepared to agent it.

All I can say is that is is a piece of work which you can be extremely proud of and I would encourage you to keep submitting it. Good luck and I hope you manage to find the right mix of agent and publisher to take it forward.

Yours etc.

So, what do I do? Self publish, keep sending it out, or crawl under my duvet and weep?

Help!

This has now been sorted.

Okay, so I overreacted, but I do assure you it was not 'self-righteous indignation' - it was the thought that 'fictional' bus stories from a 'fictional' character who pretended to be real and that the stories were real, was what peeved me most.

It might be tautology - but that's a lot different from a real person adopting an author's name. I do hope you can appreciate the difference.

For the record, both stephen and terry are my real names, switched. I use steve in Asia because it's easier and simplier to pronounce - many Thais have trouble getting their tongue around the r's in terry - and it's the names I publish under - see Kindle.

Shall we move on?

BTW OFP (and Wrath) - all is forgiven - I wish you all the very best in hosting this month's comp. 

My previous post is below.

I'm in the Bren camp. Duplicity is abhorrent. Pretending that fictional characters and their stories  - however amusing, entertaining and likeable - are real, is what disappoints me most of all. You drew sympathy from others with real issues in their lives, and that is unforgetable.

Fallon, I would ask you to resign your membership from this community, but I suspect you would not. Therefore if you would extend the courtesy NOT to  post any of yours or your cohorts comments on ANY of my posts I will refrain from posting on yours as from this one.

You will understand that I will not be entering into this month's competition. And as Tony said, very graciously, 'nuff said.

Without the road trip and psychedelics, though!

As some of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I finished the first draft of my novel. I'm leaving it to rest at the moment and trying to get on with other projects in the mean time, but I'm hoping that, within 6 months, I shall have something that is worth sending out to agents. We'll see how it goes.

This bit, I'm actually looking forward to. I'm quite looking forward to the revising and the tweaking and the editing, to meeting my characters again and perfecting the world they live in and the tales they have to tell.

What I am not looking forward to is the bit that comes after that. And with it comes a bit of a confession:

The publishing industry terrifies me.

Not so much the rejection or the negative critiques - I'm not looking forward to this inevitable part of the process, but that doesn't scare me. What does scare me is just getting started in the first place.

It all seems such an impenetrable miasma of 'do this' and 'don't do this', of warnings and scams. Just finding the agents I wish to send off queries to in the first place is mortifyingly complicated. And that's before I've even considered trying to write the query letter (which, if I am honest, probably daunts me more than writing the damn novel). Even though I am pretty happy with my story and have confidence in it (heh, someone has to!) I'm not great at selling myself and find the idea of having to essentially say 'hey, look what I've done - isn't it fantastic?' quite petrifying (and more than a little distasteful - one has been taught, in the proper British manner, not to crow about one's perceived accomplishments). Not because of their possible responses (I have resigned myself to the reality of huge amounts of rejection), but just... just... why does everything have to be so horribly complicated? It's so intimidating, it's unreal!

Although, that might be the point - only those who really want it would bother putting themselves through it...

This short letter, written in pencil, was sent to my Nan by her sister and was found amongst her possessions. The date at the top, is just “Tuesday”.
A meaningless letter? No, it’s nine words that tell so much.

1. Nobody had phones.
2. The littlest thing had to be written in a letter, stamped, and walked to the postbox, a day or two in advance. People had conversations by letter, no need for preamble or lengthy sign-offs. These conversations could stretch over days.
3. Luce doesn’t say a time, and expects that Nell will be in, whenever she arrives. If not, she’ll wait, confident that Nell will appear soon.
4. There’s no allowance for Nell to say it’s not convenient, she’s away, she’s doing something else.
5. It took two buses to get from Luce’s to Nell’s; add on the walk to and from the bus stop and the wait in between, it’s a journey of well over an hour, but she proposed it anyway. Does this show their easy familiarity?  Tell us that life was much more predictable? That Luce knew Nell would be free on Thursday because she always was? And Nell knew what time Luce would arrive because she always did?
6. It’s the kind of thing that would now be an email or text.

I recall in my university holidays, my group of friends would all write to each other, even over Christmas when we were only apart a fortnight. We found the time, each day or other day, to write to each other, to find the Basildon Bond, or the cute writing paper with matching envelopes in lilac or pink with a picture in the corner, to choose the pen with the nicest or funkiest nib, to write everything that had happened that day and what we thought about it. Pages and pages.
If the letter were to a special boy, we might spray perfume on it, or apply lipstick and kiss the back.

The arrival of the postman was exciting.

I can’t remember when I last hand-wrote a letter; or received one. Probably Christmas or my birthday, but these are summary newsletters, not representations of daily life.

Now I write emails, containing the minutiae of my day. But where’s the record of them? Hard-drives break, computers are thrown away. I never print off emails.
When it’s time for someone to sort through my belongings, a great swathe of my life will be lost for ever – the friends I had, the way my life was. No one will ever know.

Do you think that future historians will mine computer dumps for evidence of personal lives at the turn of the millennium? How else will they ever find out?
It will never be so easy to read a discarded hard drive as it is to untie a bundle of letters and reconstruct times gone by. Does it matter?

Saturday 9:30am it's drizzling
but still I here the charming melodies
of garden birds calling away
From the window where I sit
I can see out onto the street
All is quiet except for the odd fluttering
and the familiar cheery face
of the postman doing his rounds
as a yappy dog sees him on his way

The recognisable clatter of my letterbox
Followed by the flipping, flapping, flop
of letters falling on to my tiled floor
I rise from my chair to retrieve them
White envelopes and a variety of junk mail
No difference there then
Just how  long ago was it
Since I last received a cheery hello,
miss you, thankyou, love you?

I blame it all on modern technology of course
Never did I think I too would be entangled by the web
Too old now for that
my schooling long since passed
But no, slowly I get caught up into emails
Facebook, Twitter and the likes
Being pretty housebound it brought me company
I/we made new friends together
And now look forward to my newer daily mailbox

Even with computer progression the unwanted mail comes
Not the bills, reminders nor bank
They're mainly formalities with direct debits anyway
But scammers and unwanted advertisers
That push their way into your home
no matter how you try to block them
So desperate are they to clench a deal
In this climate of recession
Where so many have no work

Further to the letter from the Times, this is a letter to the passport office.

This was actually taken from a UK
> > passport application
> > and a member of staff
> > copied it,
> > as it made her laugh all day.
>
>
> >
> > Subject: Passport Application
> >
> >
> > Dear Minister,
> > I'm in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to
> understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.
> >
> > How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and
> telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in
> 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on
> what date?
> >
> > How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every
> Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I
> have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you
> still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with
> contractors working for the government?
> >
> > How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I
> am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the
> government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will
> keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.
> > Do you people do this by hand?
> >
> > You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one
> with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30-odd years. It's on
> my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports
> I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out
> before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and
> all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the
> electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our
> lords and masters are up for re-election.
> >
> > Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in
> Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother's name is Mary, her maiden
> name was Reynolds, my father's name is Robert, and I'd be absolutely
> astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!
> >
> > I apologise Minister. I'm obviously not myself this morning. But between
> you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house,
> then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of
> Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture... Do I look like Bin
> Laden? I don't want to activate the Fifth Reich for God's sake! I just want
> to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of
> week's well-earned rest away from all this crap.
> >
> > Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get
> another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to
> the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to
> have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new
> passport the same day? But nooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make
> sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with
> our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on
> the goddamn picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile
> in in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
> > Hey, you know why we can't smile? 'Cause we're totally jacked off!
> >
> > I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten
> years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances
> which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the
> Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have
> been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the
> Services. However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am --
> you know, someone like my doctor...
> > who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN
> PAKISTAN...
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > An Irate British Citizen.

Further to Clockwise's blog, here is a letter posted in the Times.

'true' letter in The Times: A 98 year old woman in the UK wrote this to her bank.  The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the Times.



Dear Sir,
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it.  I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years.  You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.


My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.  I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.  From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.  Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.  Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete.  I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.  Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me.  I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.  As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further.  When you call me, press buttons as follows:
1. To make an appointment to see me.
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7. To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required.  A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.)
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through to 8.
9.  To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.  While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.


Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.
Your Humble Client




(This was written by a 98 year old woman;
DOESN'T SHE MAKE YOU PROUD!