A year in Compendia, January to June
Take a look at what you missed in the first half of last year!
Hi!
As 2023 draws to a close I hope you’ve had a restful holiday season, and if not I hope things improve for you soon.
It’s been a busy year for the Compendia community, so I thought for my final posts of the year I’d offer a wrap up of the highlights of 2023. But before we dive in, just a gentle reminder that those who subscribe to Compendia get a whole host of benefits, and all for around £5 per month. These include news, articles, essays, fiction and a whole host of insider gossip about the publishing industry. You’ll get advice and support about writing and getting your work published, plus guest posts and interviews. Plus, in 2024 I’ll be introducing a monthly Writing Group and regular Ask Me Anything chats, plus exclusive behind-the-scenes posts as I write, edit and prepare to publish a new novel. Phew! I hope you agree that’s pretty good value. Why not take a look?
Here’re some highlights of 2023…
January
“Some people don’t even want to pay 99p for a book. They want to pay nothing. Now, those people could go to a library (every time a book is borrowed the author gets a little bit of money - not much but it adds up), and some do. But others will just download it, illegally, from the internet. This is theft, no different from walking into a physical bookstore and taking a copy without paying for it. And of course, the more theft that happens, the lower the revenue generated from book sales, and therefore if the publishers are going to continue boasting those lovely record profits…. you get the picture.”
February
It’s a potential mine-field. The word ‘f**got’ was included when two characters performed a karaoke version of ‘Fairytale of New York’ in the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special, and (quite rightly in my opinion) the producers were roundly criticised for it. But the difference here is that there was no particular reason that song had to be the one performed, they could have chosen a clip of the two characters performing a different part of the song, and they could have used a sound effect to drown out that offensive word. But… I also think only The Pogues have a right to go back and re-record their own song to remove the offensive word.
March
A few years later, once the book was published and had found its success, I finally understood the reason for that knowing look. Clare knew something that, back then, I didn’t — we are always in the books we write, no matter how ‘fictional’ they are, no matter how far away from our real selves our characters may be. With the benefit of hindsight, I could see that in fact I was on every page of that book. I realised that, to me anyway, Before I Go to Sleep is on one level a book about someone approaching middle age who is struggling to work out who they are, who is taking stock of where they got to in life and comparing it to the ambitions they had as a younger person.
April
And yet… here I am, about to embark on a project in which I plan to completely ignore all this advice, or to do my best to, anyway. Why?
I guess I want to demonstrate to any aspiring authors out there that I really mean it, my first drafts are as bad as anyone else’s, they’re as full of ‘notes-to-self’ and bad writing, plus clichés that I will fix later, and they have characters who change their name (sometimes without me even remembering) and plot holes that a 747 would have no trouble in soaring through, plus geographical improbabilities and chronological impossibilities.
May
She tasted blood. Copper, acidic. A coin on her tongue. Except it wasn’t a coin, and there was more of the thick, viscous fluid running down her face.
The blood wasn’t her own. She knew that, she knew she was uninjured, though exactly how she knew that, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t really know where she was, either. Or how she got there. She couldn’t really be certain of anything.
June
She looked at him. He was driving casually, letting the wheel slide through his open hands as the car came out of a bend. He had a weird smile on his face — almost a smirk— and for a moment she wondered if the idea turned him on. Two women together. She tried to imagine it, but found she couldn’t. She realised she had no idea what two women would even do in bed together. Two men, yes, though the thought ofthat repulsed her just a little. But two women? Where would they even start?
Look out for the rest of 2023’s highlights tomorrow!