Michael Allen - A Writer's Guide To Everything Important - The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers

If I have couched this discussion of morality in terms of sexual content, that is for the sake of simplicity. The point I am trying to make is that, in the quite recent past, novels (and many other forms of art or entertainment) were regarded with deep suspicion by the political, social and religious leaders of society.

Today, by comparison, almost anything goes. In the UK, the broadsheet newspapers still tend to print f*** and s***, despite the fact that the uncensored versions of these words are now in the dictionary; and the tabloids have so far not ventured to show us any pubic hair. (I understand that many young ladies have it surgically removed these days, anyway.) But no novelist any longer feels much constrained by the law on sexual content, or fears the wrath of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Such constraints as exist are imposed by publishers, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they know what their customers will tolerate at any given time.

This being the case, why mention morality at all?

Well, I mention it because, in my opinion, a novel is best understood to be a machine for generating emotion. (Furthermore, I would argue that the novel may be regarded as a surrogate for all art forms.)

If that is so, then we writers need to consider the morality of the process, if only for our own peace of mind. The question is, can a writer feel assured that the process of creating emotion in readers is a moral one?

Sooner or later, even the least sensitive of us is going to wonder whether to include a particular scene or not. Is this scene going to do our chosen audience any harm? Is it going to do any good? Either way, is it something we would care to have our name associated with?

The subject could, I dare say, make a book in itself, but it may save a great deal of time if I admit, without equivocation, that the novel is, in principle, capable of doing harm. So is a bottle of aspirin, if you take the contents all at once.

On the other hand, a bottle of aspirin is capable of doing good. Given a sensible attitude on the part of the aspirin user, the drug’s potential for good far outweighs the harm, and life would get awfully complicated if we were to ban everything that is capable of being misused. Cars and carving-knives can be used to kill people, but I don’t think we are likely to forbid anyone to possess them as a result.

The risk of the novel, or any other art form, doing any serious harm to adults seems to me to be minimal. People who are upset by something unpleasant will normally just stop reading. I do it all the time. Children, of course, will require guidance in their access to the arts, just as no child should sensibly be allowed to drink a bottle of whisky.

To my mind, an involvement in writing fiction is consequently not something that you need to be ashamed of. Quite the reverse: knowing what we do about the effects of emotion, I suggest that writing fiction can be viewed, in a modest way, as the equivalent of practising medicine. Alternative medicine, perhaps, rather than full-scale surgery.

Ideally, fiction helps people to feel better emotionally; and, given the interaction of mind and body, it may therefore help them to feel better physically.

If writers can be regarded as potential healers, and I believe they can, then it follows, in my thinking at least, that creating a novel is not only a moral activity but also – dammit – an honourable one.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books and the book world. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

It’s not easy to explain to you how lucky you are to be working as a writer in an era when this sort of information is readily available. It certainly wasn’t when I started out. Dozens of experienced writers, agents, lawyers, and – yes – even publishers, are today making their knowledge and judgements available to you entirely free of charge.

That having been said, some of the bloggers are not too proud to ask you to leave a cash tip if you find a post of theirs particularly helpful. I have left such a tip more than once, even after fifty years in the business, and so should you – now and then, if you can afford it.

If you are flush with cash, you might care to subscribe to the two main trade journals of the book-publishing world; both appear weekly. In the UK, you need The Bookseller . Current subscription rates are £196 p.a. if you live in the UK, £264 if you live elsewhere. In the US, the equivalent is Publishers Weekly , which will set you back $249 for a one-year print + digital subscription, and $399 if you live outside the US. (Digital-only rates for PW are cheaper.)

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes the magazine available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs which are currently absolutely essential reading include the following:

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it. And he cheerfully beats up any agents and publishers who say silly things online.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Other useful blogs, in no particular order:

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Jennifer Jackson. Blog by a US agent. Queries received in 2013: 6,152. New clients taken on in 2013: 2.

Pub Rants. ‘A very nice literary agent indulges in polite rants.’

Janet Reid. Agent.

Dystel & Goderich. Jane Dystel has had a distinguished career in publishing. Now an agent, and by the sound of it one of the more sensible ones.

Grumpy Old Bookman. Finally, this one is my own. Between 2004 and 2007 I wrote about 1.25 million words on this blog: reviews, news, comment, advice. There’s a lot of good stuff there if you search for it. Since 2007, I have been only an occasional blogger, mainly to let you know of the publication of one of my own new books.

As stated at the beginning, I have not provided hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I have assumed that you quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about something that has been mentioned in the text. And in any case, when you do start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

AFTERWORD

May I respectfully inform you that I (Michael Allen, in case you’ve forgotten the name) have written several other ebooks that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.