One of the cardinal rules of Weblog is that one shouldn't simply write about oneself. Oh, it's OK to use an incident in your personal life to detonate an observation of greater strength but to tell everyone about your day...? I can't even do that on facebook. However, This week's entry comes close, in my view, to, if not breaking the cardinal rule, then at least chipping the glaze a little.
In a desperate bid to sell books without actually doing any hard work, I recently responded to a number of requests for "interviews". These are a curious device which some webloggers have introduced into literary weblogs,, which involves them giving over some server space to people who want to get noticed. It's a useful thing to do and I'm always grateful if people deign to include me.
However, I'm not at all comfortable with either writing about myself or trying to sell my books. (I squirm with embarrasment that I allowed my wife to take The Circling Song into a local bookstore and ask the manager to read it. The manager said she would and would be in touch. I do not hold my breath.) And so, I usually trot out the sort of thing that I reprint here. The "original can be found at: www.margaretmillmore.com
"Of the myriad things that they tell us the World can be divided into, the one that is exercising me as I write, is the one that would run something along the lines of it (the World) being divided into those people who talk about themselves and those who don’t. Firmly in the latter camp, I marvel at the facility with which some people are able to blather on about themselves, seemingly confident in their belief that this is just what the benighted public has been pining for all along. Sadly, for those on my side of the fence, the neighbours on the other side appear to reproducing and are clearly in need of some lebensraum. To paraphrase the tagline from George A Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”, “When Hell is full of interesting and accomplished people, then utter nobodies will stalk prime-time T.V.” Fifteen minutes of fame? If only. If only.
You’ll have gathered by now that I am reluctant to reveal anything at all about myself. There was a time when such reticence was accepted at face value or even, in some circles, deemed admirable. Nowadays, the more usual response is likely to be, “What does he have to hide?” To which the answer is, “As much as I can possibly get away with.”
So what am I doing here?
In simple terms, I’m trying to garner some interest in my latest endeavour. This was of course, the raison d’être for the original American “Talk Shows” back, as they say, in the day. I like that the British term for these little bouts of vacuousness is “Chat Shows”, the word, “chat” deriving from the activity beloved of the British Tommy in the trenches, which involved a small group sitting companionably whilst they went through their clothing in search of lice. When the little buggers were squished, they apparently made a rather pleasing cracking sound, which was rendered by soldiers great and small as, “chat!”. There is something rather clever to be done there with chat shows, vermin and dirty laundry but my muse tells me it would be pretty laboured.
So enough about me. Why do I write? Well, it’s something to do, isn’t it? Better than sitting around not writing. Truth is, I began to write because I so seldom came across stories that I wanted to read. I would occasionally begin a novel, recommended by someone whose opinion I valued and find that after a few sittings, what should have been an anticipatory quiver, as I looked forward to the next opportunity to read it had become a sigh of resignation, as I realised the hour was upon me. Gradually, like most men, it turns out, found that I was spending much of my time reading non-fiction.
Occasionally, though, there would be the story that I simply could not let go. The spine of the book shattered into 300-odd striations as I folded it back on itself to within an inch of its life; its corners bent into a grubby ruch, as it was, in turns thrust into and hauled out of jacket pockets; its pages torn and stained from encounters with various household implements and foodstuffs and bodily fluids. Loved, almost literally to death. These stories I would read again and again and, each time wonder what it was that gave them their magic.
Now, writers argue incessantly about whether it is the story that counts or the manner in which it is told and, you will be relieved to learn, I have no intention of rehearsing the debate here. What I will say, however, is that when either of these things is missing, it simply doesn’t work for me. A ripping yarn told in the breathless voice of an adolescent of either species may well turn out to be an entertaining film but to have to read it, would fill me with dismay. The last time I did that was with “The Da Vinci Code” and that turned out to be both the literary and cinematic equivalent of being forced to watch a school nativity play in which even your own child has refused to perform for artistic reasons.
Likewise, the latest from the pen of the greatest literary genius since the last one, in which it takes them 130,000 words to say, ‘I loved him/her but then he/she found someone else and I was sad.’ doesn’t do a great deal for me, either. Genre is, if the work is good, irrelevant. (Although I have a particular dislike of high fantasy. Anything where the characters have made up names, where there are warriors, wizards and talismans can stay on the shelf.)
And that, in a nutshell, is what motivates me to read and write the way I do. Good stories to keep the reader guessing and interested, written in a manner that refuses to accept that people need their language liquidised and served up by the spoonful".
In a desperate bid to sell books without actually doing any hard work, I recently responded to a number of requests for "interviews". These are a curious device which some webloggers have introduced into literary weblogs,, which involves them giving over some server space to people who want to get noticed. It's a useful thing to do and I'm always grateful if people deign to include me.
However, I'm not at all comfortable with either writing about myself or trying to sell my books. (I squirm with embarrasment that I allowed my wife to take The Circling Song into a local bookstore and ask the manager to read it. The manager said she would and would be in touch. I do not hold my breath.) And so, I usually trot out the sort of thing that I reprint here. The "original can be found at: www.margaretmillmore.com
"Of the myriad things that they tell us the World can be divided into, the one that is exercising me as I write, is the one that would run something along the lines of it (the World) being divided into those people who talk about themselves and those who don’t. Firmly in the latter camp, I marvel at the facility with which some people are able to blather on about themselves, seemingly confident in their belief that this is just what the benighted public has been pining for all along. Sadly, for those on my side of the fence, the neighbours on the other side appear to reproducing and are clearly in need of some lebensraum. To paraphrase the tagline from George A Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”, “When Hell is full of interesting and accomplished people, then utter nobodies will stalk prime-time T.V.” Fifteen minutes of fame? If only. If only.
You’ll have gathered by now that I am reluctant to reveal anything at all about myself. There was a time when such reticence was accepted at face value or even, in some circles, deemed admirable. Nowadays, the more usual response is likely to be, “What does he have to hide?” To which the answer is, “As much as I can possibly get away with.”
So what am I doing here?
In simple terms, I’m trying to garner some interest in my latest endeavour. This was of course, the raison d’être for the original American “Talk Shows” back, as they say, in the day. I like that the British term for these little bouts of vacuousness is “Chat Shows”, the word, “chat” deriving from the activity beloved of the British Tommy in the trenches, which involved a small group sitting companionably whilst they went through their clothing in search of lice. When the little buggers were squished, they apparently made a rather pleasing cracking sound, which was rendered by soldiers great and small as, “chat!”. There is something rather clever to be done there with chat shows, vermin and dirty laundry but my muse tells me it would be pretty laboured.
So enough about me. Why do I write? Well, it’s something to do, isn’t it? Better than sitting around not writing. Truth is, I began to write because I so seldom came across stories that I wanted to read. I would occasionally begin a novel, recommended by someone whose opinion I valued and find that after a few sittings, what should have been an anticipatory quiver, as I looked forward to the next opportunity to read it had become a sigh of resignation, as I realised the hour was upon me. Gradually, like most men, it turns out, found that I was spending much of my time reading non-fiction.
Occasionally, though, there would be the story that I simply could not let go. The spine of the book shattered into 300-odd striations as I folded it back on itself to within an inch of its life; its corners bent into a grubby ruch, as it was, in turns thrust into and hauled out of jacket pockets; its pages torn and stained from encounters with various household implements and foodstuffs and bodily fluids. Loved, almost literally to death. These stories I would read again and again and, each time wonder what it was that gave them their magic.
Now, writers argue incessantly about whether it is the story that counts or the manner in which it is told and, you will be relieved to learn, I have no intention of rehearsing the debate here. What I will say, however, is that when either of these things is missing, it simply doesn’t work for me. A ripping yarn told in the breathless voice of an adolescent of either species may well turn out to be an entertaining film but to have to read it, would fill me with dismay. The last time I did that was with “The Da Vinci Code” and that turned out to be both the literary and cinematic equivalent of being forced to watch a school nativity play in which even your own child has refused to perform for artistic reasons.
Likewise, the latest from the pen of the greatest literary genius since the last one, in which it takes them 130,000 words to say, ‘I loved him/her but then he/she found someone else and I was sad.’ doesn’t do a great deal for me, either. Genre is, if the work is good, irrelevant. (Although I have a particular dislike of high fantasy. Anything where the characters have made up names, where there are warriors, wizards and talismans can stay on the shelf.)
And that, in a nutshell, is what motivates me to read and write the way I do. Good stories to keep the reader guessing and interested, written in a manner that refuses to accept that people need their language liquidised and served up by the spoonful".
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