Clichés, Sentimentality and Robert Burns

I am a sentimental romantic, I admit it. I try to avoid being overly sentimental when I write, in fact when I redraft I try to take out anything that’s even slightly slushy – as much as I love to cry over dead dogs (Greyfriar’s Bobby makes me wail), loss and misery, it’s only good when it’s well written. So I avoid the clichéd Hallmark style and try to aim for a more sophisticated version which allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Sometimes though familiarity really does breed contempt. Clichés become just that because they’re overused, not because they’re wrong. Words and phrases become overused because they’re good and everyone wants to say them and to write them. When I’m writing fiction I tend to use the occasional cliché in my first draft, in fact sometimes I’ll even put them in on purpose. Why? Because I use them rather like Post It notes or a highlighter pen – they remind me when I come back to the piece that I need to expand and rework that sentence or paragraph - I want it to mean the same thing as the cliché but I want it in my words and not the overused ones. 

One of the most well known and hackneyed clichés is that of a red rose to signify love – you can’t fail to have noticed how the price of red roses goes through the roof (oops, cliché), the price of red roses rises to ridiculous levels (alliteration but doesn’t have the same ring though, does it?) around Valentine’s Day. So who do we have to thank for that one? Not just Interflora but one poet in particular- Robert Burns who wrote the lyric poem ‘Oh my love is like a red, red rose’ in 1788 or there abouts.

Oh, my love is like a red, red rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

There are various archaic and modern spellings to be found in different versions of this poem and indeed there are musical versions too as this is a true ballad, a lyrical poem. However, for me anyway, the best version of this is a spoken one – read by a man with a Scots’ accent. For all that this is a over used and exceedingly well known piece, it’s still one of my favourites and almost moves me to tears each time I read it – I did say I’m a sentimental romantic! I picture this as the parting of lovers forced apart by circumstance – or maybe I’m just influenced by the life story of Burns who was prevented from marrying his sweetheart and mother to his twin sons until he became famous. The words of this poem voice a very real feeling and desire to be eternal lovers – something that seems so unlikely and unusual in today’s cynical world.

Anyway, listen to Alan Cumming reading it – sadly the embedding has been disabled or I’d have put the YouTube window in here.  It might be hugely clichéd now but I adore this poem.

Networking and Marketing for Writers and Artists

Last night I went along to the Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre in Whitstable to take part in a Creative Canterbury networking event, and very good it was too. I met Alma Caira there - she makes hand made silver jewellery, does web design, animation, and photography in addition to teaching art and crafts. I'm hoping she soon gets a website showcasing her work to which I can direct you for all your jewellery and web design needs...my commission is cheap too! I also chatted briefly with the Arts Development Officer, Mitch Robertson who now wants to come and scream in my garden - living out in the sticks does have its benefits, maybe I could start up a whole new sideline of offering a Place To Scream.

Anyway, in amongst eating strawberries and grapes we listened to a brief talk about marketing for creative businesses which was mainly aimed at visual artists and craftspeople. All fascinating stuff as the speaker mentioned building a brand and giving added value. Most writers today already have to do this in order to get ourselves out there and known but rather than us providing gift wrapping or technical knowledge about displaying work we promote ourselves and others on our blogs, Twitter and Facebook. We write articles (like this one) which we hope will be of some use to other writers and maybe of some interest to our general readers too. We tell you what we're doing, how we do it and how you can do it too. We aim to entertain and inform and with any luck you'll come back and read something else here again, or perhaps you'll remember my name and look for other things I've written elsewhere. In other words, we try to build a readership, a following. I know I'm very much still in the early stages of this - I completed my Masters Degree only two years ago (feels longer).

The marketing man last night told us how important our network of satisfied customers is and how each happy 'consumer' experience is related to seven other people but the bad ones are told to...I think he said ten but maybe it was twenty-one people. Anyway, his point was that when you're not making an effort with your customers they tell more people how bad you are and people like to feel good about their consumer choices. For artists producing an item like a painting, a sculpture, jewellery or similar things this means talking to your customers; telling them about yourself and the item, giving them a story which they can recount to their friends. It also means making your 'product' a real luxury item by providing specialist knowledge, wrappings, in short giving or offering something extra. As consumers we all know this works - just think about the difference between a supermarket own brand packet of pasta and the one 'handmade' in Tuscany - be honest, is there a huge difference between the cooked pasta by the time you've covered it in wine drenched bolognase? Not really, but then look at the packaging - cheap clear plastic with the supermarket's name printed in large letters or gorgeous dark blue paper with jaunty yellow stickers. I know which one I'd rather my friends saw when they come over for dinner - my bank account doesn't agree but that's besides the point. The luxury item says something about us as consumers - it says, "I have good taste" and quite possibly, "I have more money than sense" but I'll gloss over that....And if you're purchasing something that costs over £500 (and a good piece of art or design will cost this) then you should be getting more than the cheap clear plastic wrapping with the supermarket name on it. The marketing man talked a great deal about how there are no real differences between BMW and Mercedes Benz cars, for example, but branding relies upon our emotional choices - how we feel about ourselves for buying one brand over another.

And before you think that this is useless advice for writers...just consider for a moment which books you'd rather have on your shelves or to be seen reading in a coffee shop....Jackie Collins or Margaret Atwood? Dan Brown or A.S Byatt? I'm not saying that any of those authors produce a bad 'product' - I've read books by all of them. I won't tell which I enjoyed most....but I'm a firm believe in wide and eclectic reading, a mixed diet for the mind if you like but I know an awful lot about sex, shopping and secret codes.

I think that for writers, and indeed for anyone in the Creative Industries, it's important to know your market; to know who reads or buys what you produce, to know what they like and then you can produce more of it that's better and more desirable. Personally I'd love to be a literary writer who deals with deep philosophical questions and appears on an A level syllabus (don't ask why that's important to me...I don't know, but it seems like the pinnacle of achievement - keep your Booker prize, I want to be studied by spotty seventeen year olds). That's my dream. My reality, as I'm quickly beginning to realise, is that I find it easier to write light humorous pieces with the occasional bit of thought-provoking going on - rather like a puddle with a hidden pothole - and I've been paid to write like that in the past. Maybe I ought to return to that half-written humorous novel, plot it out properly and get it written....

Last night was really worthwhile, it's given me plenty to think about and plenty to write about Now all that remains are two things, firstly a question I need to ask you, dear reader...what would you like to see more of here?

And lastly, that by reading this blog and telling others about it you're showing the world how erudite, amusing and downright sexy you are. Honestly.

On rejections and dealing with them

I spent a large part of July worrying about having a job in September - budget cuts and so on - and part of that worrying pushed me to write lots of poetry and send out everything I have to magazines and journals. On one hand this is a Good Thing as it gave me something to focus upon and it's what I should be doing anyway. On the other hand the downside is that I've received three rejections so far and heard nothing from the others.

There are two voices in my head holding a conversation about this state of affairs; one is the sensible calm voice who knows that rejections are a necessary part of writing, that more poetry is written than read today, that maybe some of the poems were not really ready, that they didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for and that I haven't had them all rejected yet. The other voice is... well, more of a shout, a tantrum with a stamped foot if you like.

Writing is a solitary pursuit; we write firstly for ourselves, to ourselves in order to understand the world, to make sense of our feelings. For some people their writing ends there - they write diaries which explore their inner world but never see the light of the outer world. The rest of us write because we want to share something with all of you out there we want to connect, 'only connect' as E.M.Forster said. So we spend our days watching, listening and collecting bits of life which we then transcribe and transform onto the page, making sense of it, giving it a new life, making it fresh. The transcribing and transforming is the alchemy - the bit we do almost in secret, tucked away literally for some in their writing sheds, offices, attics and garrets and metaphorically for others writing in cafes and libraries who hide in plain sight. When we finally return our work to the world we, I am often so blinkered that it is like my first born child - perfect in every way.

This is getting terribly poetic here - I'll just take a moment out to translate...

I love my writing therefore I expect everyone else to do so too. I'm shocked and hurt (with dramatic flounces) when others do not feel the same way.

So that's where all the foot stamping came from and it should last approximately 12 hours if you're lucky but don't allow yourself to continue the tantrum for over 24 hours if at all possible. Why? The short answer is (and this hurts) no one cares. The long answer is what the sensible voice in my head has been saying throughout all of this.....

Rejections are a necessary part of writing -
Your writing may simply not be good enough just yet and even with rejections there is a hierarchy (at least in my head...) - no reply whatsoever means the poem either got lost or really stank, a standard form rejection means it was poor but the editor is polite, a note asking you to submit again in the future means it was still poor but you show some promise, a note explaining why they didn't accept your poem means that you're close and the poem isn't bad.
All writers even the megastars like Stephen King have been rejected - I regularly recommend his book 'On Writing' to new writers. If you didn't ever receive rejections you (I) would begin to doubt the worth of doing this...to me if something is worth doing not only should it be done well but also it shouldn't be easy. Rejections are good for the soul and good for building humility - a very necessary trait in writing so you can continue to learn and develop.

More poetry is written than read today -
Sad but true. If each of us who claims to love poetry actually bought collections from new poets or subscribed to the very same magazines we wish to be published by then there would be a bigger market for poetry. It's the chicken and the egg all over again - the chicken is the reader that gives birth to the egg, the writer...or maybe the chicken is the writer....Either way, if you want to write poetry then read it. On that note I'll briefly get on my soapbox - make sure you're reading contemporary poetry as much or more than the classics. You live now, so find out what people are writing now. You need to know what has gone before but not to the exclusion of what is happening now. For example, rock stars, pop bands, musicians generally have an awareness of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Blues, Jazz and so on, some even use pieces of classical music reworked...which reminds me - listen to Pachelbel's 'Canon' first, then listen to The Farm's 'All Together Now'.



Back to the poetry...

Maybe some of the poems were not really ready -
Did I actually put this poem away for a few weeks before I sent it out? Sometimes I can get so impressed with myself (I know I need to learn a little more humility but it's a fine balance between that and having self-confidence!) that I send out new work before it's ready. When the rejection arrives you need to look again at the poem - does it still work for you? Perhaps it needs some further revisions - now is the time to do it before you send it out again.

It didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for -
Poetry does go in trends and fashions and different journals and magazines look for different types of work. I know this is obvious but when you receive the rejection you need to remind yourself of this. Poetry tastes are different, it's all subjective and the editor you sent your precious piece to may simply not like poems about kittens (actually no one apart from small children likes poems about kittens - as much as we love the furry beasts we don't want to read soppy poems about them). Just like when you broke up with that guy who smelled odd - it's them, not you.

I haven't had them all rejected yet -

Yet.

So the short sensible answer to rejection is to 'man up' and revise, redraft and resubmit elsewhere. Keep reading, keep writing and hopefully keep improving.

I'm now going to take some of my own excellent advice and look at the latest batch of rejections.


Oh, and by the way, the job did re-materialise so I won't be entirely penniless by Christmas.

Writing for fun

Most of the writing I do is simply to please me - whether it's fiction or poetry I am my first reader and like to entertain myself. I think most people, if not all that write creatively do it because they have to, or want to, even if it's never seen by anyone else. I always love to talk to elderly ladies at family parties because so often they reveal that they've kept a diary or some sort of journal since they were a child - diary writing used to be so very common. I kept a diary from about the age of ten or eleven right up until I was in my late teens. One day I must look at these again - that is if I can bear to read the terrible purple prose and daily outpourings of teenage angst. Undoubtedly it will be full of dull, petty arguments and repeated fantasies involving Simon Le Bon.

More recently I've turned some of my experiences into comic turns - a couple I've posted here in this blog, quite a few can be found on various internet forums, especially those which ask a question each week - I submit anonymously of course. Most recently the divine Domestic Sluttery held a competition asking for culinary tales of woe, the winner receiving a gorgeous pair of 'I love cake' earrings from Love Hearts and Crosses - I posted the following story and won!


"A couple of years ago I was having some friends round to supper and I'd planned a very impressive rolled pork loin with apricot and herb stuffing all tied together with bacon, home grown vegetables - I was out to impress. I'd gone to the local farmers' market and bought the pork loin, then left it in the kitchen under a gauze umbrella thing ready for me to begin my creation once I'd got the veg. I went out to the garden (in my floral dress, of course) collecting mange tout, carrots and fresh herbs - impressive...but I was married to a farmer - none of it was my doing - I spent my days reading books and drinking wine!
So, there I was, Lady Bountiful, returning to the kitchen with my veggie haul, only to discover the large black farm cat had dragged the pork loin onto the floor and eaten half of it! It was still raw!

I cut off the chewed bit, rinsed it under a tap and carried on with the recipe, adding some more bacon and pretended it hadn't happened.
Later that evening once my guests had drank half their body weight in wine I told them - they don't talk to me anymore."

Here's the cat that did the deed, he goes by the name of Mog.