So, today I asked Jackie if she would design up a cover for the book I’ve decided to publish. This is her first attempt with a little bit of tinkering by me. What do you think?
For some people, it’s natural to feel uncomfortable with change. If you’re a creative sort, it’s something you need to be very careful with. It will hold you back.
That’s the thought I have at the writer’s hub networking event at Portsmouth’s New Theatre Royal, where Mark Chisnell arrives to speak about the state of publishing in the early 21st Century.
It’s a fascinating talk, with Mark’s story confirming what I have been thinking for some time… that the job of the agent and even the publisher in fulfilling their own commercial needs is to work against the interests of the writer.
His story of having a novel published by Random House, just as he had always dreamed of as a kid, his book spending 2 weeks on the shelves of W H Smith and Waterstone’s, receiving no supporting publicity from the publisher (except for a Press Release that would have scored badly in an “O” Level exam) and then having the books withdrawn is a priceless tale of the treatment the majority of authors receive from publishing houses.
But Mark Chisnell goes on to talk about the massive change that is happening in publishing now. He talks about the opportunities offered by e-books, and the strategies for getting publicity. He talks about the artistic control you have as a writer when self-publishing via Kindle. He talks about the circulation of stories from people who have stories to tell, but who would never previously have been allowed a voice. Of books that have not been messed around with by a small publishing clique in London who think they know what’s good for us, or what will sell.
It’s all here, in his talk. A precise summary of the pygmy world of publishing, and the massive opportunities the electronic world offers us as writers.
The responses of the audience are fascinating. There are concerns about grammar, and about not having editorial guidance, which are issues that really sound like ones of affirmation – as if your audience is not affirmation enough. One speaker seems concerned that you aren’t going to get the very best out of yourself if you aren’t made to work it up by an editor and you just publish. A red herring, I believe. A publisher’s editor can wreck a piece of work or make it fantastic. The fact is, whoever you work with, you need to trust their judgement more than you need them to work for one publishing house or another.
Another literary author feels that self-publishing compromises quality. But it’s not as if the people wanting to read shlock horror or works containing poor grammar are competing with the audience for “elite” writing, so what difference does it make if there are more voices for a reader to choose from?
Another, bizarrely, seems to believe that any attempt to make money from writing is “wrong”, while at the same time stating that vanity publishing is also “wrong”. Which doesn’t leave her very many places to go. Of course, such a view is just bloody nonsense.
It’s a fascinating night that really shows how much fear can surround change. It has really set me thinking…
And doing, too, I have decided.
My project. To get my first e-book out for Christmas, if possible.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
This, extracted from my Diary during my journey through France last year.
15th September
We came to the flat lands of the Somme, bleak and featureless. As time went by, we began to see cemeteries here and there. There were so many, larger and smaller one, French, British and Commonwealth, American, German. All well kept and manicured, many standing in the middle of wide open farmland. Crowds of the dead, gathered neatly together. In silent places, in orderly rows like a counterpoint to the chaos of their deaths.
At Peronne we went to the Historial de la Grande Guerre – the large World War I museum. We saw uniforms, sketches, maps, newspaper clippings, film footage. A diary note of a woman who had just sent her husband off to war made Jackie shed a tear reading, and we held each other a moment in a sea of sadness. Reading the facts about the beginnings of this war, it seemed so pointless. There didn’t seem to be a real reason for it. A web of protracted treaties and politics, yes – but no grand design, nothing on which really to base the carnage which was to come. Except one death. The death of one man, that would be echoed a million times and more over.
Later, we were headed towards La Grande Mine, a huge crater 100m wide and 30m dep, left on 1st July 1916 by the largest charge along the front that morning: 60,000 lbs of explosives. I thought of the French war memorials we had seen everywhere throughout the beautiful country as we had travelled in our carefree way. Sometimes, in small places, those memorials had only had three or four names on them, sometimes many more.
I thought of the memorials to assassinations of villagers in WWII. I thought of free people now, raising their glasses to drink Burgundy, the Loire and of Savoie, and of cattle gently chewing the cud in the Jura, where people had died helping Jews and allied soldiers to escape to Switzerland. I remember that we had passed a museum to the Resistance in Grenoble, and in the Morvan had seen a WWII exhibition in a church in Chaudes-Aigues, where now busloads of tourists come to bathe in the volcanic spring waters.
In the midst of life we are in death.
Everywhere, the wars of Europe had left their mark – and here at La Boiselle, the Great War had pressed its giant thumbprint into the soft clay for all to see. And for all to remember.
More than a century of Portsmouth history came to an end as Savoy Court, originally called Pier Mansions, was gutted in a giant blaze on Southsea seafront today.
Built as private apartments at the start of the 20th century, Savoy Court was a magnificent relic from a previous era. Designed with an Edwardian architect’s eye for line, order and proportion, it was a beautiful structure.
Originally named after South Parade Pier which it stood opposite, Pier Mansions was constructed in 1905 beside Southsea Coastguard Station. At the time it housed retired naval officers and genteel women who enjoyed magnificent views across the Solent.
In 1929, the Savoy Cafe and Ballroom was built on the former site of the Coastguard Station next to Pier Mansions. From then on, the fates of the two buildings would be intertwined.
While Pier Mansions retained private apartments with shops below, The Savoy Cafe, with its Funlands amusement arcade was a place for people to enjoy traditional English seaside delights.
Holidaymakers revelled on the beach, by the pier, and in and around the Savoy Cafe and the other shops along the front. It wasn’t only the English summer they were enjoying, but the benign influence of well-placed, attractive and useful architecture.
In the war years, the buildings survived the bombing while the Savoy Cafe played a vital part in the war effort.
Converted to a Merchant and Royal Naval hostel by the British Sailors’ Society, 50,000 sailors used its services every month, while 17,000 a month attended the morale-boosting entertainment it provided. Then, as the tide of the war turned, the Cafe’s role changed. For six weeks after D-Day the Savoy Cafe sent out a continuous service of mobile canteens to feed the men waiting to cross the Channel and liberate Europe.
After the war, in 1946 Billy Butlin bought The Savoy Cafe and promised a new lease of life. Somewhere around 1953, Pier Mansions was added to the complex, and together the buildings became known as The Savoy Buildings.
It was run by a wily manager, George Turner, who had an unfailing nose for business.
The night the Savoy Ballroom hosted a dance for 800 Russian sailors was a great example of his entrepreneurship. The posters and tickets for the event were printed in Russian, and Turner arranged for ‘600 girl escorts’ to go along. The event was a massive success. Throughout the 1950s, the ballroom was the venue for big bands. Chris Barber, Ted Heath and numerous others played there.
By 1960 The Savoy Buildings was ready for a revamp. The Evening News reported that 13 chandeliers ‘of the highest quality’ were flown in from the continent to adorn the newly named Crystal Suite. Mirrors in the Suite appeared to produce a never-ending trail of light ‘stretching off into infinity’.
This refurbishment saw the start of a new era. As fashions changed Turner began to hire rock ‘n’ roll bands. Gene Vincent played the Savoy, supported by Sounds Incorporated. This was clearly the way to go and in 1963 Turner hired a group called The Beatles who played for £50 performing on the musicians’ dais in front of a mural of a mermaid. The Rolling Stones, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Tremeloes, The Who and other legends followed. They were never paid more than £85 a night.
In the 1970s, the Savoy Buildings took on a new role. By now essentially one complex with flats above the Savoy Court end, the night clubs below thumped long into the night. Alongside Nero’s nightclub, which opened in 1971, the old Crystal Suite was converted into Joanna’s in 1973, where many a sailor worked up a hangover into the early hours.
Nero’s was renamed twice, firstly to Fifth Avenue and then to Time and Envy. Whatever the name, it was always lively.
I remember seeing a woman built like a brick outbuilding putting on an impromptu stripshow for the boys on the dance floor, before bouncers helped her back into the tiny piece of cloth around her body that passed for a bra.
By the early 21st Century, times had changed again. After a decision by the council to move night clubs to the city centre, suddenly the Savoy Buildings were left without a purpose. By 2007, they were abandoned.
Something of a different format today. With all the looting kicking off in London, I decided to make a quick recording of this song of mine. It’s called “Chance”. We are seeing in Britain the first e-riots – the riots in “civilized” countries that are orchestrated by Blackberry and Twitter. Interesting to note that e-riots is an anagram of Tories…
Chance – by Matt Wingett – (recorded on a cheap field recorder.)
The lyrics are:
In the old town the young men are shrugging their shoulders
Looks like they’ve killed another kid won’t make it to another year older
And they’re dragging the canal looking for the passing of angels
But they don’t stand a chance coz angels don’t leave prints where they walk
And the kids gathered round to throw stones
Are laughing at the uniforms
Waiting for a shot in the air
Like they’ve been waiting all along…
Well, down the shopping mall, the kids have kicked in another window
That spoke the buying sensation, only high they’ll ever know
And over-the-counter-culture the old rebel’s cash till rings
Filled with the forged notes of the songs he don’t believe but still sings
And the kids’ faces pressed to the glass
Of the stores are politely ignored
That old come-on: “Not till you’re like us
Will we allow you to climb on board.”
And: “Everybody’s equal in the eyes of the dollar”
Is the cry of the businessman
“But if you are not buying, then you are worth nothing to me, and for you I couldn’t give a damn.
And I will not respect you, until you have learned the lesson taken from the First Book of Finance
The parable I’m preaching’s called the Yardstick of Possession, says the worthless don’t deserve a chance
Not a chance, not a chance…”
Well, there’s an opening party on the new side of town
Where they built the shopping complex, everyone’s come down
But the kids who kicked the windows, well they’ve all been locked out
They couldn’t raise the cash… instead they raise the shout:
“If we can’t buy our self respect, we’ll steal it from you instead
And though you may try to deny, some of the blame’s gonna fall on your head…”
Coz… etc
“Darling, I think you’re special. Special… like in Special Needs.”
I’ve said it myself when I’m feeling mischievous – and for anyone like me who’s got just a little bit tired of hearing all about the weird love-in that is going on between PM Cameron and the leader of the free world at the moment, it’s worth remembering that little spin that you can put on the word “special”.
Having just got back from the States to attend a friend’s wedding, the weird double-edged sword that is the relationship between Britain and America is right now as prominent in the Press as the Willis Tower is prominent in the middle of Chicago. If you haven’t heard of the Willis Tower, by the way, try its old name: the Sears Tower. Sound more familiar? It’s just that it’s now named after the London-based company Willis Holdings Group. And there’s the thing: Britain is America’s largest single investor, and America is Britain’s largest single investor. The US and Britain are stuck with each other for some time to come, that’s for sure – so making that relationship work is absolutely vital for both of us.
But the “special” relationship is a strange one. As a friend I spoke to in the US told me, the Brits aren’t entirely sure of what they think of the US. “It’s not even right to call the relationship complicated. It is,” she told me, “downright schizophrenic.”
Looking at it from my perspective, she’s right.
Growing up in Britain the 1970s, the son of a Naval officer, I didn’t quite know how to respond to the idea of America.
One day, my father took me to the Captain’s House at the shorebase, HMS Mercury, and stood me in front of a portrait of Lord Nelson.
“This man,” he told me, “changed history and allowed Britain to become the world’s most powerful nation.”
While for 150 years or so that had been true, by the time he told me this it was old news. It overlooked 35 years of US global dominance. Tales of a lost empire are a great way to set up a pointless rivalry – and I’m sure I’m not the only one of my generation to have heard them.
What did I know of America? I loved the Superman comics I bought from the newsagent down the road starring a musclebound oaf flying around in a cape and lifting up whole planets. At the same time I hated the American belief, manifested in countless Westerns, that might is right and that arguments could be settled down the barrel of a gun.
I loved the crazy antics of American rock stars like Jimi Hendrix with his free expression and creativity, at the same time that I hated the moment American kids opened their mouths to speak on tv shows.
Always, always, always in growing up with America I experienced that double edge – that “yes” and “no” both at the same time.
On my short trip to the States this time around, I was struck by the differences in nuance – the tiny things, that make our countries so very, very different.
Meeting a US police Sheriff I was impressed by his complete and utter charm, by his deep sense of humour and by his courtesy and manners. Reading his facebook posts later I was surprised to find that he held what I and my friends would consider strong right wing political views – supporting the excesses of Israeli oppression of non-Jewish people, placing God at the middle of considerations about how to vote, and declaring that most homeless people don’t want to be bought food, but would prefer to spend their money on drugs.
These are opinions straight out of our worst right wing, intolerant newspapers, but in the US I think they are pretty mainstream. And despite this, I liked this guy… It was another “yes” and “no” moment. I want to learn more about him, and drink a beer with him, while knowing that there are things we will never agree on…
That ambivalence is true, too, in the so-called “special relationship”. My friend told me that while she was an exchange student in the UK, she had been shocked to be confronted by young Brits challenging her about her Americanness.
I suppose you think you came here and saved us, don’t you? – was one question she was repeatedly asked by angry Brits while she was a student in the UK. If ever there was a sign of a “Special Relationship”, then American action in World War 2 would be pretty much at the top of the list of what the Americans might point to as an example of it. Yet, the hostility aimed towards her was palpable.
The truth is, we Brits hate to be reminded that we couldn’t have made it alone, which is something we really need to get over. And hearing an accent is enough to remind us, it seems!
There is no doubt that without Uncle Sam’s massive industrial might, without the sacrifice of American lives on European and Asian soil, the whole world would have fallen under a shadow of fascism almost unimaginable. There is no doubt that American Industrial and Military sectors made a major contribution to saving the world, as US soldiers fought alongside their Allies from the British Empire, the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Yet at the same time, for the Brits it was a mixed victory. Although during the War the US had offered Britain its resources through the Lend-Lease scheme, meaning that we could use what we needed when we needed it for the duration – at the end of the War there was an invoice to be paid.
A bankrupted British Empire lay in tatters, while we borrowed a million dollars a day from the US to buy grain to stop the Germans from starving to death. At the same time, the military heavy machinery and supplies that we had borrowed from the US for the duration of the War either had to be returned or paid for. Even at the massive discount the US gave us (90%), our War Debt was only finally paid off in 2006. During the course of the War, we had bargained away our patent on the jet engine to the US, numerous other inventions, as well as an array of military bases throughout the world. These negotiations were to stand the US in good stead to project its massive military and trading presence throughout the world in the Post-War years. Throughout the war, America was preparing to make the most of the peace.
When peace finally came and Britain asked the US to honour the agreement that it share its nuclear secrets with us, after we had supplied some of our greatest brains to build the first atom bomb in the Manhattan Project, we were given a straight “no”. And when we decided to build our own nuclear power station at Calder Hall to start our own nuclear military project, the Americans genuinely drew up plans to invade Britain and destroy the facility – a plan that thankfully was never acted upon.
Meanwhile, the American policy of weakening and collapsing the British Empire remained active. After all, while in the first half of the 20th Century there had been an arms race between Britain the US and Japan, the US alone owned the peace of the latter half of the 20th Century. When the old imperial powers decided to flex their muscles in Egypt, in a combined operation between France, Britain and Israel, to drive Nasser out of the Suez Canal, America pulled the plug on the operation. It was a humiliating defeat that contributed to the further collapse of Britain’s crumbling credibility as a military power.
This, at least, is the way that the post-War years are sometimes presented from a British perspective, and it is part of this world view that informed some of the hostility that my friend from Chicago encountered whilst in the UK. Spotty kids don’t know much, but what they do know, they know with absolute ferocity, after all. And they knew they didn’t like Americans, although they couldn’t put their finger on why.
And so the story of the “special” relationship between Britain and America goes on. At times of difficulty, Britain and America work together. At times of peace, we are often rivals. We adore American pop culture – but there is enough of it that we are bound to hate it, too. We admire American science – but sulkily bemoan the loss of our great brains to the States.
We often bemoan the dumbing down of British culture by American culture – while ignoring the fact that the phrase “dumbing down” is a symptom of American English entering British English vocabulary. It’s a strange, complex, mix. As my friend in the US said: “It’s schizophrenic.”
For her, the thing that I did find shocking is that the hostility she experienced came from a generation long past being post-Imperial: she was at University over here a good 25 years after my father had told me of Lord Nelson. Old stories fade slowly, it seems.
And here’s the irony at the heart of it all. The “Special Relationship” we Brits cling to like a neurotic girlfriend is a throwback to a time when we felt far more important. It reassures us of our place in the world, while simultaneously reminding us of just how much the world has changed.
Part of the pointless resentment of young, uninformed Brits toward the US comes from exactly this: that 70 years ago, Britain as an Imperial power was Top Dog.
Many Brits just can’t quite swallow that it was both saved and superceded by that upstart nation – the Home of the Hot Dog.
The thing about phobias is that they can be of anything. And the other thing about phobias is that you can’t fake not having one.
If anyone has ever wondered whether at least some of NLP and hypnosis works, then they should talk to a phobic, and get an understanding of their fear. They should watch how the phobic’s skin goes pale, how their eyes widen and become utterly fixed on the thing they are afraid of – whether that thing is physically in the room or in their imagination. They should maybe watch the phobic break down and cry at the very thought of the thing that is causing the fear – or at least get the sense of what their personal boundaries and limits are. Then they’ll understand what a big deal a phobia can be.
It’s also worth understanding that some phobics are fine to see their object of fear from 20 feet off, while others can’t even bear seeing it at all. Someone with a fear of heights might be fine at 1 metre, and a wreck at 2. But whatever the truth, there will be a boundary beyond which the phobic can no longer contain their fear. They will quake, they will shake, they might run for it, they might cry, or they might faint.
Whatever their response, they can’t pretend they’re not afraid. So, when, at the end of a 20 minute NLP session, someone suddenly shows you that they’re not afraid any more, then they really aren’t afraid. There’s no trick. to them touching the thing they feared. It’s just that the phobia has gone.
For many, that’s the clincher with NLP. That’s the thing that suddenly makes you realise – if you ever had any doubts – that NLP really works.
As we walked into the room on that day, there was a kind of excited buzz about the whole Phobia Day phenomenon. Yet that excitement was also mixed with an almost childish fear. It was the strangest vibe, to feel in the room.
Soon, Paul McKenna arrived and started to talk about how to get rid of phobias. No doubt about it, he was funny, and he was smart. He began, straight away, undermining our sense of fear, while at the same time playing with our emotions in other ways.
After a while, he got a thumbs-up from the side of the room. The promised animal handler, Glen, was here, and he had bought some seriously scary creatures. A snake and a spider. And big.
So Paul asked for someone with a fear of spiders. A woman near to me put her hand up and said that, yes, she was frightened of spiders. And so it was that to the room’s applause, he took this pale and shaking woman on stage.
The techniques he used were straight NLP techniques. The first thing he did was to gauge how frightened she was of tarantulas – and the fact is that she was pretty terrified. He got her to give her fear a number. On a scale of one to ten, just how terrified was she was she? Well, she was right up there at number ten. Then he asked Glen to come into the room. Glen was a strange-looking individual, it struck me then. I didn’t realise at the time that there was a certain sense of theatricality in the way he presented himself that sent an unspoken message of authority to people who saw him.
He wore a kind of pale brown shirt with various badges on it, and epaulets, that made him look like a major in a tropical country. As if, whilst putting down a native uprising and being superb with the sabre, he also happened to have brought back from the land of Johnny Foreigner the odd snake or two. That uniform, I suppose, gave reassurance. It told people that he know what he was doing.
What he was doing right now was walking toward the girl on the stage with the plastic box in his hands, and a great big spider, splay-legged pressed up on the top inside corner of the box, as if it were trying to get out and get at her. I felt the hairs on my neck go up as I watched, and I saw her eyes widen.
“Stop,” she said, suddenly, and Paul McKenna gestured to Glen to stay back, and go out of the room.
Now he did his thing. The first thing he did was get this girl to find “one point” – a trick that Paul had lifted from aikido that is designed to give you more stability. Immediately she reported that fear level in her body dropping.
The next thing he did was spinning. This is the NLP technique in which you imagine and visualise the way that fear is moving in your body. You take it out of your body and flip it around so that it is going at a fast rate, and then imagine the feeling re-entering your body. And somehow, for some reason, it changes the way that you experience the feeling.
Now the woman’s fear was at seven, and dropping. “Shoot white light down your legs,” Paul instructed her, and she found the fear dropping and dropping.
Now Glen brought the spider back in again, with a big smile on his face (Glen’s that is. I couldn’t see the spider’s smile from where I sat).
We all looked backwards and forwards, between him and the drama that was about to unfold on stage as he advanced…
Some time ago two friends of mine had a wedding by the sea in a far away land. The leaves were falling on that day, I saw from the photos that appeared on facebook a little later. Although I couldn’t be there, it made me think of this poem that I had written some years before, and which now, seems right, to dedicate to Carla and Stephen.
Fall: the mystery of life retreats
within hardwood; flows deep to the heartwood –
sealed, secure. Grained vitality: token rings
yearly mark this union; the link holds good.
Treasure: life sleeps in the ripened
chest of acorn, nut, seed;
Potential spreads: locked in living wood –
the husky promise, germ of truth; seed and shell.
Evangel: winds scatter, broadcast life.
The air nuzzles trees, caresses the couple
down by the sea. High above: leaves whisper – well-wish –
shake confettied Autumn, down, down.
Harvest: the sweetest fruit of life is love, stored in stout hearts.
Kind groom, fine bride: joined by living oath,
in age-old rite; this couple, framed against the columned wood
where evergreen stands vibrant against deciduous gold.
Fall: deciduous; life returns to life – a promise held within.
Fall: evergreen; fresh scented, self-renewing, unchanged
eternal growth. Nature: holds both in her balance.
Love – stored eternally – is ever remade.
One of the events that had been trailed throughout the whole length of the course was the event known as Phobia Day.
I had seen footage of the day on the Paul McKenna showreel on the net. People handling snakes, and going up to do public speaking – neither of which I thought was a particular problem. I mean, we all know that snakes are lovely warm things, right? I’ve handled them, they’re dry, they’re slightly scaley and they are utterly beautiful. Public speaking… well, getting up in front of a whole crowd and speaking… that’s just the same as getting up in front of one person and speaking. If you can do it 100 times to one person, then pure mathematics says that you can do it once to 100 people. Right? So these were phobias that I considered utterly ridiculous.
But on the showreel there were also the spiders. I recall footage of a gigantic spider the size of a man’s hand being lifted from a glass case and placed in someone’s hand. And when I had watched it, I had felt myself shrink inside, as if the little shadow that was my soul was withdrawing inwards to the darkest recesses inside. My heart pounded, my knees quaked – and I just didn’t know what to do. The spider was utterly terrifying. As it walked, stretching its long brown/yellow legs with a slow, menacing movement, I recalled all the nightmares and imaginary horrors of my childhood. I remember the spiders in Mirkwood in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, and their monstrous mother in “The Lord Of The Rings”. And all the times that my own mother had been reduced to a quivering wreck by a sudden move on our worn red carpet by the fireplace when I was a kid. “The Valley Of The Spiders” – a short story by H G Wells… that one had really got me. Spiders were scary.
When I was a kid, my brother had picked spiders up without fear. He had brought them, cupped in his hand, for me to look at. But seeing my fear, he had then decided what a good game it was to wave them near my face. My sister was the same as me. It was, to be frank deeply annoying.
So it was that on that Saturday, as I walked into the Ibis Hotel in Earl’s Court, that I thought I had all this history on my shoulders, carrying it around like a pile of baggage. What was different, though, was that I didn’t have the deep sense of dread on me that I had expected to feel beforehand. To be frank, my head was so cleared out of rubbish already, that I didn’t quite know what to make of the day at all. However, I did have a sense of quite deep resignation to the day. And it was with that sense of resignation that I went back into that room where so many strange things, so many amazing transformations had happened already – not just to myself but also to everyone in the room – this time to face my fear.
I walked in with some anticipation.
The latest version of my sonnet on the moon. In my previous version I identified rhythmic problems to do with the shift from iambic pentameter to trochaic pentameter in the second quatrain. It meant the loss of a syllable at the end of the iambic lines in order to keep the meter fluid – a compromise I was not willing to make. At the same time, it was conceptually clunky, failing to segue adequately between quatrains and sextet. This one is closer, still, to where I am heading with this:
Man In The Moon
“When witches long ago beheld the moon
they conjured up a man hunched with a pack.
Astronomers spied ‘seas’ that would maroon
A sailor in a tranquil well of black.
Later, truer lenses picked out craters
ringed by nightbound mountains. Violent meteor
storms had tattooed deep on Luna’s face a
shadow-man – an ink-blot human creature.”
A woman, thinking, as she travels, weaves
her moonbug’s track through lunar rocks and dust –
“Technology sustains life and relieves
our need for faith or guesswork – even trust…”
The Cosmos is a mirror to each mind:
Look long upon its glass: What will YOU find?
Copyright (c) 2011, Matthew Wingett