Scotland
in the
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SR Extra
The condition of politics: populism and opportunism
A weekend essay by
R D Kernohan
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Gerry Hassan
The Seven Wonders of Scotland is a creative project to imagine seven wonders of world-class significance in our country. Since none of the ‘wonders’ will exist, the essence of the project is fictional but it is important that they could potentially exist.
The core idea is that these are physical creations, ones which illuminate what Scotland could be. It is about re-imagining Scotland, about exploring its possible future and creating different landscapes, mindsets and worlds for the reader and public to enter and be stimulated by. Such a rich terrain of different Scotlands aims to encourage people to think imaginatively and in new ways about their country and its future at this important juncture in its history.
Examples might include the idea in the 1990s that Fort William would be turned over to the Hong Kong Chinese to build a new Hong Kong in the Highlands. Or another, still active idea, is sculptor Sandy Stoddart’s huge Ossian project. The first illustrates an outward-looking economically dynamic Scotland, the second a project on a world-scale about a Scottish achievement (the Ossian tales) which changed the world.
By looking therefore at physical creations we are exploring mental states, looking to tap into deeper realities, psyches and motivations about Scotland and its future.
What we are doing therefore is creating a competition. The judges will be Hugh Andrew, David Torrance, Alison Rae of Polygon and myself.
Contributors should submit one paragraph on his or her chosen ‘wonder’ and one paragraph on the writing treatment. There is a strong creative writing element here, so there is no point in describing a wonder in dry technical detail or in the way of a political policy pamphlet.
The final pieces should be 5–7,000 words long and the winners will receive £750 each. Ideas should be submitted by 17 March 2012. The winners should submit their contributions by 14 July 2012. The book will be published in October 2012.
Please send your first submissions to: alison@birlinn.co.uk
‘I might be able to spare
you a couple of minutes,
but no more than that’
Catherine Czerkawska
Some years ago, an old friend of mine who had been involved in – and won – a professional dispute in his chosen field, said something which has stayed with me ever since. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘they underestimated us. We’re all older, no longer at the start of our careers. They were thinking in terms of the pressure they could exert on younger people. They didn’t understand that you get to an age where you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Which means that they have no leverage over you. And that’s a very powerful position to find yourself in’.
It certainly helps to explain why so many of us older, disillusioned mid-list writers are embracing the digital revolution. We have ridden the switchback of conventional publishing for so many years that we are sick of it. Frankly, we no longer care. And in the current climate, that makes us powerful.
I’ve been thinking about all this in the light of the eBook revolution and the consequent Big Publishing backlash. Recently, I wrote a post for the popular Authors Electric blog (a group of experienced writers now publishing at least some of their work in eBook form) which detailed the process of my historical novel, ‘The Amber Heart’, and the depressing tale of what had happened to it on the publishing trail over a number of years. The post has elicited a significant number of comments and tweets, and various people have emailed me to say that it’s ‘brave of you to speak out’. But when you think about it, it would only be brave if I had any residual hopes of (or desire for) another conventional publishing deal.
For more than a decade now, we writers have found ourselves trying to please a string of insiders who assured us that they had our best interests at heart. For most of us, the real fiction was that oft-repeated promise of jam tomorrow if only we could buckle down and give them exactly what they wanted. I distinctly remember the moment when my interaction with this industry changed from enthusiastic aspiration to horrified apprehension. It was when an insider warned me: ‘if two of your books are rejected, no matter how much an editor actually likes your writing, they aren’t even going to look at a third. So it’s better not to submit anything until you’re sure that it’s absolutely right for the current market’.
I should point out for any industry outsiders who might be reading this, that we’re not talking about poor writing here. Books are often rejected in spite of fulsome editorial praise these days. They invariably fall at the sales hurdle. A casual ‘We don’t think we can market this,’ is enough to place a book firmly beyond the publishing pale.
But it was very difficult for us to get it right when we didn’t know what they wanted. This was because they didn’t know what they wanted. And what they thought they wanted kept changing. What they really wanted was a massive hit but the only way they could see of attaining that was to predicate it on last year’s massive hit. And once they had it, they wanted the writer to go on delivering it time after time. Which meant that they expected a new version of exactly the same book. Heaven forbid that a writer might want to try his or her hand at something different. Heaven forbid that a writer might actually want to change and grow.
But when all is said and done, writers are suppliers to the publishing industry, and you can only hack off your suppliers so many times. Especially when other outlets, based on a new and different model, start to appear.
The thing that angers me most about all this, though, is the way in which writers, the suppliers to this industry, have been made to feel guilty for not quite coming up to scratch. And I’m angry at myself for going along with it – and for some of the advice I have handed out to other people. It was our fault that we were ‘mid-list’ writers when publishing manifestly didn’t want us any more. It was our fault that we didn’t attain mega sales with a poorly (or in too many cases, scarcely) promoted novel. It was our fault that we could only seem to write what we really wanted to write, and not the holy grail of the stunning debut or the instant breakthrough book. It was our fault that we were looking for a slow build and long-term growth when what they needed was a quick flash in the pan. It was certainly our fault that we weren’t eternally grateful to be published when all they had to do was crack open another case of aspiring writers.
For many writers, what we had dreamed would be a mutually supportive and nurturing relationship (the one they still keep talking about to television interviewers) turned out to be more akin to those relationships where one partner becomes so bemused by the desire to satisfy the unreasonable demands of the other that she or he starts to doubt her own sanity – but is so cowed by this treatment that leaving seems unthinkable.
A few years ago, with a decent publishing track record and with my then agent’s blessing and advice, I submitted a project to a small but reasonably successful publisher, having ascertained first of all that he was actually willing to look at it. Since he made encouraging noises, I sent a sample of the work and some months later – because I knew that I was going to be working in the vicinity of his office over a few days – contacted him to see if we might be able to schedule a short meeting at a time to suit him. His mind-boggling reply was that if I cared to come over at some point, he might be able to spare me a couple of minutes, ‘but no more than that’. I might have been touting double glazing or stationery.
I declined, of course. I was already on the verge of not caring. And I saw with astonishing clarity that if somebody is prepared to treat an experienced fellow professional like this, the working relationship isn’t exactly going to be a happy one.
But when all is said and done, writers are suppliers to the publishing industry, and you can only hack off your suppliers so many times. Especially when other outlets, based on a new and different model, start to appear. So publishers can hardly scream blue murder when those same suppliers decide to go somewhere else where they are facilitated in their desire to get on with the job in hand – that of making the best product they can and selling it to such customers as want to buy it. That’s all we needed, really. Just a modicum of professionalism and respect, a little support along the way, and a fairly prompt and transparent payment for sales made.
Catherine Czerkawska is a playwright and author
