More on Wirral Libraries

 Since I wrote about the Wirral library closures just before Christmas, I’ve had loads of hits from people searching for info on them, so although there are far more authoritative websites on the subject (principally Campaign for the Book), I want to spread the word about the latest thing you can do to protest. 

Although Wirral Borough Council remains determined to forge ahead with the closures, there is still hope in the form of a mass letter-writing campaign to Secretary of State for Culture, Andy Burnham.

 

Under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, library authorities have a statutory responsibility to provide ‘a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof,’ and in the event that they fail to do so, people can ask the Secretary of State to launch an investigation. Campaign for the Book is urging everyone to write, whether or not you live in Wirral – your local library could be next.

 

The address is:

 

The Right Hon. Andy Burnham MP

Secretary of State for Culture

Department of Culture, Media and Sports

2-4 Cockspur Street

London SW1 5DH

 

Several authors a million times more eloquent and famous than me have already written, and you can see their letters on Alan Gibbons’s blog if you need some inspiration. (UPDATE: Mine is on there now too, even though I’m not famous or anything.)

 

 

*****

 

If you live in Wirral or have otherwise been keeping up with the campaign, this will be old news, but just so other readers don’t miss out, here’s the glorious text of an email sent by Wirral councillor Jim Crabtree to Hoylake campaigner Jim O’Neill on January 13 (full story in The Daily Post):

 

“Jim Im fad up with all your childish crap please keep it too yourself and don’t send me any more I’m fed up deleting your trash.”

 

I believe that’s what’s known in internet terms as an EPIC FAIL.

 

First review!

I’ve just had a nice advance review for Kill-Grief. It’s on my website here:

http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/reviews.html

It’s not just Wikipedia

       (Thank you to ilco on Stock Exchange for the image)

Most historical novelists are probably familiar with the reaction: “Gosh, I could never manage all that research!” I wrote a post about this a while back on Picnic Publishing’s blog, so I won’t repeat too much of that. Instead, I want to talk about doing that research on the web.

 

Wait.. what!? Not… the internets? No!!! You can’t trust the Google! Argh!

 

Sometimes I sense that people don’t see internet research as the Real Thing. Unless you’re in the county archives trying not to get your greasy fingerprints on a 200-year-old manuscript, you’re not doing it right. Online research is for people who don’t care about accuracy, because the entire web is written by one pasty-faced 13-year-old American boy with no social skills and an unhealthy fixation on boobs.

 

I love doing research in archives, and that’s how I studied most of the original sources for Kill-Grief. Believe me, it’s wonderful to experience the texture and smell of real documents, to see a character’s real-life handwriting or to stumble across a tiny note that stitches together fiction and reality in an unexpectedly exciting way. But let’s face it, everyone’s circumstances are different and there is no pure, perfect way of being an historical novelist.

 

Living next door to the British Library and having no other commitments would make research easier, but we’re not living in an ideal world (and why should we be?) For me, stuck in a village where the most educational resource is the post office notice-board, my limitation is that I don’t fancy wrestling a lively toddler onto the London train and trying to make him keep his hands off rare documents for eight hours.

 

For others it might be the soul-destroying prospect of attempting public transport in a wheelchair, or having agoraphobia, or feeling too guilty to abandon an elderly dad with dementia.

 

Or any of the million other reasons why you can’t always drop everything to go and Be A Writer. That’s where the internet is so valuable. While it can’t, for example, give you first-hand experience of the atmosphere of another country, or let you touch materials or try on historical clothes, it’s not to be written off as a lightweight research tool for people who aren’t really serious about historical fiction.

 

My top two ways in which the web really comes into its own are:

 

a.) by letting you narrow down which books you need and find out what other people think of them. Then you can buy them online or check their availability in your local library’s catalogue.

 

b.) by providing access to digitised versions of primary sources that give you exactly the same text as you’d see in the Record Office. OK, so you miss out on the pleasure of coming face-to-face with the original documents, but if the only copy in the world is located in Buttsville, Arizona and you live in Crud Avenue, Hull, then you can probably survive without that pleasure.

 

However many jokers put stupid crap on Wikipedia for a laugh, they can’t change digitised original documents. The web has a wealth of images, newspapers, public domain books and academic papers whose integrity is not compromised by the fact that they’re displayed electronically. Looking at them on screen from the comfort of your own bed does not make you a worse historical novelist than someone who can afford the plane ticket to Buttsville.

 

Now, after all that, the actual point of this post was to introduce some links to useful historical resources that I’ve recently discovered. I’ve gone on rather too long already, however, so I’m going to spread them out as occasional posts between other stuff. Look out for a post about online image archives soon.

That thing about not giving up

 (Thank you to Vaughan James for his photo, Uphill Climb)

It crops up on loads of writing websites and author blogs – the advice that if you want to be a published writer, you must never give up. I used to think it was all very well for people to say that – I mean, most of them just happened to have a book deal, right? It was easy for them to look down with a beatific smile from the heights of publication to patronise the folks treading water in the slush pile. They were right not to give up because they were talented – but if you’re an aspiring writer who has just received her fortieth wonkily photocopied rejection slip, how can you be sure it still applies to you?

 

I’ve never really liked the term ‘aspiring writer,’ but it makes me even more uncomfortable now I’m supposedly not one any more. It suggests that even if you’ve written ten complete novels but haven’t got any of them published, your efforts aren’t really valid. You’re just some wannabe; some deluded schmuck scribbling in green ink. I’ve sometimes used the term ‘not-yet-published writer’ instead, but that’s far from ideal. It still presents publication as the only legitimate goal. It doesn’t allow for the possibility that writing might be worth doing because you love it. Having said that, it’s infuriating when a published writer says “publication isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know! It won’t sort your whole life out, you know!” It reminds me of someone saying after one of my miscarriages “Oh well, if you heard my baby screaming, you’d probably think ‘Thank God!’”

 

Of course life is going to have its difficulties after you get published, and there are plenty of worries directly resulting from publication, but it is worth striving for and the only way to get it is to persevere. That’s why the more helpful writers keep on telling you not to give up. Not after one rejection.

 

Not after a friend begs to read your work and then hurries away without eye-contact when you next see her at the school gate.

Not after ten rejections.

Not after you read a heartbreakingly brilliant book by a writer twenty years younger than you.

Not after an agent says he wants to represent you… then asks for £350.

Not after twenty rejections.

Not after someone looks all solemn and informs you “It’s very difficult to get published, you know, dear. I hope you won’t be too disappointed if…”

Not after the other members of your writing group exchange weary glances while you’re reading out your work.

Not after someone on a writers’ forum gets a six-figure deal for a first draft they tapped out in three weeks.

Not after fifty rejections.

Not after you see a broadsheet review for a novel with almost exactly the same themes, setting and plot as you’ve been working on for the last ten years.

Not after your partner leaves you for being a selfish so-and-so who just plays on the computer all day.

Not after a hundred rejections.

Not after you read over the brilliant stuff you wrote last night and die inside at how crap it all looks this morning.

 

A lot of people say you have to be thick-skinned, but I don’t quite agree. That implies letting everything wash over you – laughing at each rejection letter, chucking it in the recycling bin and cheerfully printing off the next submission as if you haven’t a care in the world. But I don’t think the toughness has to be on the surface, like some kind of forcefield. You can let the disappointment in, let the rejections hurt and the frustration make you want to scream, and let yourself half-believe you’re one of the deluded nutters of slush-pile folklore. You can come close to giving up – very close – but there has to be a limit to how far you let those feelings get.

 

Your toughness doesn’t have to be a rhino’s hide protecting you from the outside world – that would keep out all the emotions and levels of understanding you need in order to realise your characters’ vulnerabilities. It must be more like a diamond hidden right in the middle of you, small but sparkling, incapable of being smashed by the horrors that made it through your thin skin. It can be tiny, but if it’s made out of the hardest substance in the world – hope – then it’s big enough.

New Year, New Blogs

 Blogs are a bit like pets. You think it would be nice to have a dog, then once you discover they’re easy to look after, you think it might be nice to get a rabbit too, and the species start to accumulate. This is what is happening to me.

 

I’m very excited to announce two new blogs today. The first is my own and is called The Quack Doctor. In the past I’ve occasionally talked about quack nostrums on this blog, but as it’s really supposed to be about writing, I’ve decided not to clog it up with medical history stuff. The Quack Doctor is going to be a collection of patent medicine adverts from 18th- and 19th-century newspapers. I’m posting daily until 14 January, when I’ll settle down to posting three times a week.

From May’s Celebrated Love Lozenges to Cupiss’s Constitution Horse-Balls, there’ll be plenty of interesting historical remedies to entertain you.

 

My second new blogging venture is with Strictly Writing, a group blog with six other writers. Some of us are published or about to be, some unpublished, and between us we’re writing contemporary and historical, children’s and adult fiction, lit fic and commercial, novels and short stories – so expect a wide range of views! We kick off today with a fab post from Sam Tonge, the blog’s founder, about New Year writing resolutions, then look out for my article The Slush Pile Experience on Wednesday 7 Jan.

 

Now, with all this blogging to keep up with, how am I ever going to finish my latest book?