10 Books for Writers

Here's my top ten books to buy for writers this Christmas (or other festival of your choice).

One thing a writer loves to do is to read about the process of writing - it makes you think you're 'a writer' without all that pesky having to write anything yourself! Believe me - I know!

If you're planning to buy any of these, or indeed anything from Amazon, please click on the links in the text. I'll get a small % of anything you buy from Amazon (at no cost to yourselves) if you arrive through the links below or the 10% off one in the right hand bar... think of it as your Christmas pressie to me!

1

Top of every budding author, playwright, poet's wish list is the latest edition of perennial bestseller Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2011, £8.69 on Amazon. Bulging with useful contacts in all sections of the literary community, it also offers expert articles on thorny issues e.g. writing for television, finding an agent. Even if the writer you've bought it for never actually opens it they will feel a little bit more like an author just for having it on the shelf!

2

To be fair, I haven't finished this yet, but Booklife - Digital Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer looks like fascinating reading  for authors already trying to establish a presence on the internet, or those considering it. It looks particularly at blogging, promotional opportunities, and networking with editors and publicists.

3

Confession time now - I've had A Creative Writing Handbook: Developing Dramatic Technique, Individual Style and Voice out of the library since May! I'm going to have to buy it... even though I promised myself not to buy any more writing books. This is the closest I've got to a creative writing course book with lots of proper exercises and examples that really help you kick start your own. It would suit teachers of creative writing too!

 4

This gem is quite old now but The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary (Stillman) is still a classic volume for poets, with detailed  descriptions and examples of different forms, all you ever wanted to know about trochees, iambs and their chums, and a really, really good rhyming dictionary that makes others (especially the online pretenders blush with shame/blame/bad name).

5

This won't suit 'seat of the pants' writers, but for the planning kind it's hard to beat Novel Writing: 16 Steps to Success for a thorough system of writing a novel that is well-plotted and populated with well-rounded characters. Author Evan Marshall is also very active online and offers many free resources  to authors. Check out his website here.

6

If you write humour, if you enjoy it and are interested in how it works, you could do a lot worse than The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves. It is a curious mixture of very erudite and well-researched musings on the nature of comedy and what makes a joke funny... and lots and lot of very funny jokes. It's a cracker!

7

I've seen Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft mentioned so many times as the best book on creative writing that I had to buy it. Of course I haven't read it yet, so it shouldn't appear on this list - especially when I can't remember who the various people who recommended it were, but I've always enjoyed his writing even back in the days when he was Richard Bachman - great plots peopled by real human beings.

8

For anyone who loves reading - as well as those who love writing, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is the definitive guide to the grand themes of literature: man against monster, the quest, tragedy, comedy, and whatever the hell the other three are. Oh, and don't try to click on the picture where it says. None of that magic here! Click on the link for more.

 
9

Carol Blake's From Pitch to Publication: Everything You Need to Know to Get Your Novel Published is a really sound, businesslike guide for authors ready to publish. It takes you through what editors are looking for, how to do your final edits and synopsis, approach and work with agents, the process of publications and lots of stuff about rights and advances and managing finances that frankly, some of us may never need to know. *sigh*.

10

Although most of these books are about the craft of writing, I  include Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times from Bloodaxe Books because it's probably the finest anthology of contemporary poetry around, and I like the way it's organised around the big themes of life with powerful poems on journeys, growing up, love, death and chocolate (actually I made that last one up - the world is still waiting for the definitive chocolate poetry anthology).

Please do share your favourite books about writing 

Literary tattoos

I've edited newsletters, I've edited articles and reports. I've edited stories and poems.

But last week was the first time I ever edited a human body. 

To be fair, the tattoo was yet to be applied and I was only really being consulted on font size, but I noticed a grammatic error (it was a quote which had been cut down a bit, so the ends didn't quite fit together) and some dodgy punctuation. 

 
And, yes, it was one of my colleagues in the library - what have I been saying all along about librarians and dark underbellies (or in this case, two fairly symmetrical dark sides)?  You never know what lurks beneath the practical cardigan, stretch pants and sensible shoes. None of these pictures are of the tattoo in question, by the way.

It turns out literary tattoos are quite the thing. Not content with adorning their bodies with a rose/butterfly/names of soon-to-be-ex-lover/full-colour death metal scenario, today's bibliophiles, poet-fanciers and epigrammarians are wearing their favourite phrases, passages and even book covers close to their hearts...and other organs. 

I blame Robbie Williams.

It reminds me of the lines from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: 

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

More literary tattoos here: Huffington Post and here: Contrariwise and in the Guardian Books Blog but, for scale and variety check out the whole passages, illustrations etc at Yuppie Punk.

So you know what I'm going to ask, don't you?  What lines or phrase from a book or poem do you love so much that you would write them not in stone, but in your own skin?

Now, children, are you sitting comfortably?

A couple of times lately, I've had to work a few hours in the Children's Library - which is conveniently (for me!) separate in an adjacent building. 

It isn't really my 'oeuvre'. I don't have kids or young cousins. I'm not an auntie. I don't have many friends with kids (once they have them, they tend to mix with other parents) and most of my neighbours are elderly.

So it's like they're an alien species. I'm not sure how to communicate or, indeed, what to say. I'm quite chatty to adult borrowers but feel my chosen topics (government cutbacks, spreadsheet techniques, identity theft, the weather) may fall on stony ground with youngsters. So I opt for talking to everyone as if they were about 35, and if aliens come I'll probably do the same. Heaven knows, some of our young visitors even behave as if they were 35.  

Anyway, browsing through the (broadly) safe and cuddly world of children's fiction, I couldn't help noticing that some of the stories need a bit of updating.  After all, nursery rhymes are sometimes believed to be about social issues of the time, so I have set about the task... 

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jumped over the cfl...


Mary Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With insecticide and fertiliser
and B&Q gazebo


Rock-a-bye baby in a tree top
Call Social Services - this has to stop!


Baa baa, black sheep - have any wool?
No sir, no sir - since there was the cull

Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner
Eating his five a day...

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...
Humpty Dumpty! Had an accident that wasn't your fault?
Call 0800 ….

Three mice with visual impairments...

P.S.  Some excellent additions in the comments posted below including a fine reworking of my favourite Belloc cautionary tale

 

Writing on the Wall - Part II

This continues from yesterday's post of quotes and pictures from street artist Banksy. 

Of course, a lot of places are blighted by 'tagging' and hideous, pointless or offensive graffiti - but must we tar it all with the same brush?

Some interesting points were raised yesterday: Raining Acorns mentioned the windows of New York subway trains being obliterated with paint so you can't see which station you're at, but also directed me to her co-blogger Carol-Ann's marvelous post about a local street-painting festival - check it out.

Meanwhile Dave, who has laboured long and hard over The Great Wall of Norfolk called us to reflect upon the pride of the wall-owner, the love of a good, clean wall.

But I still think not every wall deserves to be revered.  Bottom right, for example, is the uniformly horrible concrete wall around the Palestinian territories of the West Bank. Whatever your political views, this picture is poignant and well-exercised. It makes you 'think about stuff' - which I suppose is the purpose of art (although a real artist would phrase that better!).  

Incidentally, I don't know what the words next to it say, but don't they detract from the effect?

Meanwhile, I stumbled across this post on Don't Panic RTFM blog  about London's Hackney Road animal graffiti, an example of which is on the left. 

Anyway...  this brings me back to the patio, and what to do with my side of my neighbour's 4 metre erection... which I'll come back to when ... or rather IF it is ever completed!

*sighs*

Writing on the Wall

One of the great things about working in the library is that I stumble across some very splendid books it wouldn't occur to me to look for.

I picked up the excellent Wall and Piece about graffiti superstar Banksy.

He has some very thought-provoking things to say about writing on walls:

"There is no elitism or hype... and nobody is put off by the price of admission."

"The people who run our cities don't understand graffiti ...they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless."

"The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message from every available surface but you're never allowed to answer back."

"...graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three kinds of people: politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers."

I have never really graffiti'd anything - except in chalk (made-up gods for the new religion I founded. aged 9 - which was frowned upon). Oh and I was a guest of the New Zealand Chalksters in Auckland last year - they take 'guerilla* poetry' out onto the streets quite literally with giant chalks - they make an impact but not a permanent (i.e. criminal) one.

What do you think? Free art or menace to society?

Scrawl your replies below...

Continued in this post

* No poems about gorillas, please.

Wirral's MOST haunted library

I love the way the publicity for Wirral Bookfest described my branch - Wallasey Central Library - as 'Wirral's MOST haunted library'. It implies all the others are just slightly haunted, or at most averagely.

So we had famous horror author Ramsey Campbell - he's local - to give a talk and offered the added enticement of a spooky backdrop and a 'ghost' tour of the premises along with a history of the building.

I'd turned up (on my night off) because I was interested in Ramsey Campbell's writing life and tips, but the group was divided in two and one half had the tour while the other half asked questions. I'd been roped in to 'make sure everyone who started on the tour finished it' upstairs. So I missed all the questions. 

Did I mention the library I work in is haunted? There are stories of strange noises, doors opening, an exorcism that not only failed to get rid of restless spirits, but may have enticed some more out of the graveyard next door! 

The tour was given in the spookiest upstairs corridor by our rather severe reference librarian. She told us about the caretaker who hung himself there, and of another, more documented, tragedy: a live-in caretaker spent many years there but when he was widowed the powers-that-be wanted a married couple to do the job and moved him to a smaller branch. Having lost his wife, his benefits and his home, he was heart-broken. He moved in with his son and daughter-in-law. One day they found a note from him on the table. Rushing upstairs they found him lying on the floor of his room in pools of blood. He had slit his own throat.

The first floor corridor we were in - which links the main library with the junior library - was known, she said, for strange 'feelings' - a bone-numbing cold, the sense of not being alone, the committee room door that keeps opening when there are people inside, but never when there aren't.

I go along it to the staff room on a regular basis and nothing has ever tingled my spine or curdled my blood, but after hearing the sorry tales of  hangings, throat slittings, mysterious footsteps etc, I was left in the corridor on my own in the dark to wait for the next group. 

Then I heard footsteps. 

It's a rambling old building, the floor changes level, the corridors aren't straight. There's a winding stone staircase that leads up from an untrammelled part of the ground floor to the floor I was on and then up to the turret. (Yes, we have a turret.)  The footsteps were coming up the stairs. The sound stopped for a second, a pause at the top of the stairs, and then continued towards me. A slow, steady tread. I couldn't see who it was because the corridor is crooked. And we'd turned the lights out earlier for 'effect'. I felt a chill. The footsteps came closer...

... it was my colleague Jane on her way back to the ladies!

~

On the plus side, I bumped into a chap whose creative writing evening classes I used to go to in that very building, some (ahem) years ago. That isn't him in the picture - it's me getting into the 'spirit' of things.

So there you go - it is clearly Wirral's MOST haunted library - it stirred up ghosts for me!

Top 20 Lightbulb Jokes

The clocks go back this weekend here in the UK and the nights are drawing in so I thought light up your lives by sharing some of the best lightbulb jokes I know.

My favourites (of course) are the ones that subvert cliches or play with words/ideas.

If you're not familiar with the type, the (otherwise disappointing) LightbulbJokes.com gives this definition:  How many (name of group of people/persons) does it take to change a light bulb ? Answer: (A finite positive integer F) One to change the bulb, and the rest to (behave in a manner stereotypical of their group) or (say something stereotypical of their group in certain situations)

But don't go rushing off over there because these are better, starting with oldies-but-goodies:

Q: How many men does it take to change lightbulb?

A: One to do it and 9 mates to congratulate him down at the pub

 

Q: How many Blue Peter presenters does it take to change a lightbulb ?

A: Two. One to change it, and one to turn the old one into an attractive Christmas tree decoration.

 

Q: How many librarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: "I don't know, but I can look it up for you."

 

Q: Another topical one! How many Local Government Officials does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Fifty, one to change the light bulb and 49 to carry out a fact finding mission to Shanghai to see how they change light bulbs there.

 

Q: How many censors does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One to ---- ------- ----- and another to ---- ----- ---- while ---- ---- - - -----with a ------

 

Q: How many Orwellian thought police does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None.... There never was any light bulb, don't you remember?

 

Q: How many Catholic Priests / C of E Vicars / Orthodox Rabbis (delete where applicable) does it take to change lightbulb?

A:  "Change? Change??”

 

Q: How many Vietnam war veterans does it take to change lightbulb?

A: "You don’t know? No you don't know - cos you weren't there, man!"

 

Q: How many modern artists? does it take to change lightbulb?

A: One to climb the giraffe and the other to fill the bath tub with brightly colored machine tools

 

Q: How many surrealists? does it take to change lightbulb?

A: A fish

 

Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer," and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb," do hereby and forthwith agree…

 

Q: How many defence lawyers does it take to change lightbulb?

A: How many can you afford?

 

Q: How many psychoanalysts does it take to change lightbulb?...

A: Two: One to change the lightbulb and the other to hold the mother - er, penis - er, ladder!

 

Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? 

A: None. They just declare darkness the industry standard

 

Q: How many Zen Buddhists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Change must come from within.

 

Q: How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Two, but don’t ask me how they got in there!

 

And on that subject…

 

Q How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A “I can't tell whether you mean 'change’ a light bulb or 'have sex’ in a light bulb. Can we reword it to remove the ambiguity?”

 

Q: How many mystery writers does it take to change lightbulb?

A: One to write the majority of it and the other to give it an unexpected twist at the end

(last two from: http://darkerotica.blogspot.com/2005/01/literary-light-bulbs.html)

 

Q:  How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? 

                   swimming

A:  None, fish are          through the       of my consciousness,

           and                          edges

           I          dark.

             like the

This last from the vast vaults of : http://www.eyrie.org/~thad/strange/lightbulbs.html

There's also more here and here, but by far the biggest selection I've come across on the web is on this site