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Comment from the book world in April 2009

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April 2009

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Creative writing and the canon

26 April 2009

'Teaching 'helps in thinking about your own writing in a more formal theoretical way. Writers might think about point of view or structure or character, and often you have an instinctive understanding, but what it has helped me do is get a more theoretically well-founded idea...

It's very frightening for the students, they just don't know what they are going into at all. When I was starting in 1989 the potential routes one could take were reasonably clear. Now it's so much more complicated...

The idea of what constitutes literary value has changed or become less consensual. It's harder to establish what is good and what is not, and that is one of the things that forms the canon. Barnes, Amis, McEwan were the last people through the door, and then the door closed, and then the building fell down.'

Giles Foden, author of Turbulence, in the Bookseller

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'Rejected by every single UK publisher'

20 April 2009

'All writers, unless they're very fortunate, know how difficult it is to get noticed, to become 'discovered'. I became an 'overnight success' (I clapped when I read the review that said it) after almost twenty years: stories in obscure little magazines; a couple of story collections published by a tiny northeastern press; a novel rejected by every single UK publisher; a couple of dozen readers who loved my work; a part of me that said it all would work out well; and another part that simply didn't give a damn. I wrote because I loved to write, and I'd keep on writing no matter how much recognition I received.


An important thing to know is that the world of publishers and agents that can seem so distant, so elusive, so impenetrable isn't really so. They, too, know how difficult it is. After all, they spend their days rejecting manuscripts; they gaze wearily at their ever-mounting slush piles. But they also know that there will be magical moments when the manuscript arrives from an unknown name that stops them in their tracks, that makes them say, 'Aha!' And a new writer is suddenly discovered. It happens, and it keeps on happening.

David Almond on SWBWI website Undiscovered Voices

'Poetic language'

13 April 2009

'I've nothing against popular culture, but the idea that there is something divisive about bringing to people the greatest language ever written is utterly wrong. I think it's dying out, but there was a feeling that somehow it almost wasn't politically correct to be interested in serious and great poetry. To some extent it's much more politically correct to go to football matches...

'After all, what is it that makes us human? It's language. And poetic language is the most rare form. It's like a thrilling thing that a line can set off in your mind a whole world of potential experience. Either it inspires you in terms of wanting certain experiences, or it can help you to treasure the experience within those lines. And therefore life, for the short time we're on this Earth, is immensely enriched.'

Josephine Hart, author of theWords that Burn book and CD

'The e-book revolution'

6 April 2009

'There is some hesitancy with publishers fully embracing e-books. We have a 'book love', the printed book is a gorgeous object. We need to communicate that love with e-books, and there is something shiny and new and mobile about them.

The author deserves the value. There are people out there that don't understand that, who think that bytes are cheaper than paper. The industry has established a level of value of buying the work of a creative person and I think we should sustain that throughout the e-book revolution.'

Stephen Page, CEO and Publisher of Faber, in the Bookseller